


Save Our City

by SleepytimeOtter



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Childhood Trauma, Eddie's pov, Families of Choice, Graphic Depictions of Illness, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, a bunch of blood/illness talk obviously, mentions of abuse, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-01-27 10:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21390910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepytimeOtter/pseuds/SleepytimeOtter
Summary: Eddie knows something is terribly wrong as soon as he lands at Bangor International. If the sirens and screams of panic didn't tip him off, the aggressive, shambling figures crowding outside of the airport's glass doors certainly did. Luckily for him, he runs into a few familiar faces to keep him company.Based off of the AU bypngdrawson Twitter!
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Across the room, beyond the pane  
the whole world is churning, bleeding and burning  
hailstorms and ash  
the moon is as blood  
over the soldiers who sag in the mud
> 
> Save our city  
keep our souls, Lord  
through the rapture  
of this world
> 
> [Save Our City - Ludo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4NtGWOnfA)
> 
> * * *
> 
> Inspired off of the amazing AU artwork by [pngdraws](https://twitter.com/pngdraws) over on Twitter! Please be sure to see the amazing artwork she (and [bonesbubs](https://twitter.com/bonesbubs)) have done for this AU. It's all so amazing!

By the time they reach the outskirts of Bangor, the sun is little more than a bloody bruise on the horizon. It drips down in a swirl of red, purple, and pink; colors that remind Eddie of the times that he had tripped on concrete as a child and injured and split his knee. Normally, sunsets were something that Eddie enjoyed. But something about this one seems _wrong_, like the sky itself is just as sick as the inhabitants on the earth below.

Out here, where it’s less densely populated, it’s much quieter than in the hub of the city. Between people scrambling to evacuate, police, fire, and ambulances whizzing by, and of course the _dead fucking walking,_ Bangor turned into a bit of a warzone soon after Eddie stepped off of his flight. He thought it was kind of funny, seeing the end of the world the moment he stepped foot back in his home state on the way to the hellhole that was his hometown. Funny in a dark, horrible sort of way.

Eddie’s legs and knees ache. He’s the type that likes running normally (it started as a safe, rebellious act against his mother), but it’s usually been at his own pace and wasn’t literal hours of running and walking as quickly as he could manage. He also doesn’t typically have to keep up with people that had legs much longer than his or stay behind when that same person ran out of breath. He feels like he’s aged twenty years in what must have been only eight hours. He wipes his face with a groan.

“Boys.”

Eddie looks up at the sound of Bev’s voice. She’s pointing in the distance, over the horizon, and Eddie shields his eyes behind a cupped hand in order to see what she’s looking at.

“Apartments?” Richie offers, squinting behind his giant glasses. He’s right; a few blocks up, there seems to be a box-shaped cluster of apartment buildings, and by the looks of it they seem completely untouched. Richie, Eddie and Bev had passed plenty of condos, neighborhoods, and other once-inhabited places during their escape, and it’s pretty easy to tell which ones were the ones you’d want to stay away from. This one seems quiet, at least, which was a start.

“Well, I think it’s worth taking a look,” Bev says, quietly. They also pretty quickly figured out that the infected population seemed attracted to noises more than anything else, so they kept their voices down if at all possible. “It’s starting to get late, and we need somewhere to stay.”

“Good idea,” Eddie says. The idea of being out at night in Bangor is scary enough without the threat of being attacked by frenzied people, so he’s happy to do anything to prevent that. 

“Lead the way, mademoiselle.” Richie pulls out his best, half-whispered French accent, and Eddie only stares at him. He sweeps his arm towards one of the buildings as if he’s opening the entrance to a red carpet event. Bev grins at him, giving him a courtesy as she breezes past him.

They take a few fleeting glances around the complex, searching for any sign of anything odd or out of place before moving in. But all that can be seen is the bright green of the grass spread between crisscrossed sidewalks and pathways, with not another person — living or… otherwise — in sight.

Bev motions for them to follow her. The three of them half-jog towards the old apartment building, searching for a way in - which they quickly find in a lone utility door that opens to the inside. They wait, listening for any sound of danger before Bev slowly cracks the door open to peer inside.

Apparently satisfied that there weren’t any infected people lying in wait on the other side, she opens the door open a little wider. A cool gust of air conditioning hits all three of them in the face, and it’s probably the only pleasant surprise that Eddie has had all day. Now, at least the summer heat wouldn’t get to them for a while - _if_ they actually did find a place to hole up in, that is.

The apartment is dark and way quieter than the other buildings they’d entered. There is a maze of hallways with multiple apartment units in every direction, cast completely in deepening shadow. There is a growing smell of what Eddie can only imagine is blood; It’s a thick, metallic smell that hits the back of your throat and springs tears up to your eyes. He’d spent his entire life trying to avoid the smell of blood (or anything that involved it), but it seems he can’t run away from it now.

“It’s homey in here,” Richie says, leaning down in front of a blood-soaked swath of carpet. To his credit, he’s good at lightening the mood. Eddie snorts, despite himself.

“I, too, love blood-soaked apartments,” Eddie says, sneering.

“I think Bev might like them even more than you, though, Spaghetti.”

Bev scoffs and flips Richie the bird. There’s not an ounce of actual annoyance on her face, though, as she again motions for them to follow.

Bev, Richie, and Eddie creep forward, careful to mask their footsteps as well as they possibly can. Richie seems to have the hardest time out of all three of them, with his gangly legs and heavy steps. Eddie shushes him on more than one occasion, and Richie only shoots him exasperated glances and exaggerated hand gestures. Eddie strains his senses into the silence and the darkness beyond, searching for any sort of sound or movement that might tip them off to any of the infected nearby.

Water drips from water fountains and showers long forgotten, and a siren wails in the distance, but thankfully, Eddie doesn’t hear much else. He should be glad, probably, but the silence only unnerves him. It feels like something is mere moments from leaping out and getting them, or that he’s going to see something disgusting or gut-wrenching. He’s always hated the feeling of being so on edge.

The first few apartments that they check are quickly eliminated as shelter options. There is an odd, broken mumbling sound behind the door of the first apartment they reached… then low scratching and bumping sounds on the inside. Richie makes a crude joke about _bumping_, and after rolling their eyes at him, they quickly decide to leave that door unopened.

The last apartment they check has the door swung open, with a note taped to it that reads: _ALREADY EVACUATED, ANYBODY READING: **GET OUT**_

Eddie focuses on the fact that the “get out” is underlined three times. It’s an ominous message, and one that makes a knot of dread sink deep in Eddie’s gut.

“I think we should try to go higher up,” Bev decides, her blue eyes lingering on the sign a little too long. Eddie agrees, his voice high-pitched and a little too hasty. The other two don’t comment on it. He knows they have to have noticed it regardless, however, when they pick up the pace in finding the stairwell. 

Honestly, their journey up the stairs is uneventful. The stairwell up to the third floor is old and squeaks beneath the weight of Eddie’s shoes, but there aren’t any infected people hiding around any corners which is a massive upside in his book. There are the occasional smears of blood on the walls or drips on the stairs or floorboards, though; proof that they _were_ here, at one point or another.

He tries not to linger on that thought too long.

By the time that they reach the top part of the stairs, Eddie and Richie are basically wheezing. Bev makes a quip about them being old and out of shape, which is _very offensive_ to Eddie who works out three times a week. He’s just not used to spending days _running from zombies_, that’s all. After a quick break, they continue up until they reach the top floor of the building. Eddie figures it’s best to be up high so that they could have a vantage point, and hopefully, it’ll be a little bit harder for the infected to climb so many stairs.

The upper levels of the apartment building are lit up a little better than the floors below, thanks to the golden-orange light streaming in from the occasional window. It’s hard to say whether Eddie likes having the light better or not because while the extra visibility is always a good thing, he doesn’t like the eerie feeling the red-hued light brings with it. It only adds to the creepy fucking atmosphere.

“This one seems quiet,” Bev calls, her tone hushed and just loud enough for Eddie and Richie to hear her. She motions toward one of the rooms near the end of the hall.

“It’s worth a shot,” Eddie mouths, shrugging. He just wants to get out of the open hallway - at all costs.

Bev tries the door handle, jiggling it gently, and looks genuinely surprised to see that it’s unlocked. It opens with a gentle _creak_, and they all take a moment to glance at each other. After a moment of listening, she shrugs. From where Eddie is standing, it looks like the entire place is empty, but that doesn’t say much. He was never the most trusting person, but the dead walking made him just a little more paranoid. 

So naturally, he ends up being the last of the three to step into the shabby apartment. He closes the door quietly, and Richie flashes him a reassuring smile.

“Hello?” Bev calls out once the door is closed behind them. Eddie balks at her.

“Should- shouldn’t we like, surprise them or something? It seems like a bad idea to just announce our presence if someth-” Eddie catches himself. “--Someone... is in here. We don’t wanna fucking die here, Bev.”

“It’s fine, Eddie.” Her voice a harsh whisper, she shoots him a look. Eddie stares at her flatly but keeps quiet.

Bev calls out once, twice and then three times more; but each time her words are met with silence. The three exchange another set of looks and slowly start to move in, peeking around corners and furniture with skeptical glances.

With every footstep, Eddie expects to hear something. His skin prickles uncomfortably and his shoulders hunch, hands shaking around the umbrella that he’d picked up in the apartment lobby. If he were to be honest with himself, he had no idea how he would even use an umbrella to protect himself against _anything_, let alone a human - but it’s the best weapon he has at his disposal.

Richie, on the other hand, seems to find the entire situation hilarious. Glancing sideways at him, Eddie shushes when he sees the tell-tale signs that he’s going to burst out in giggles at the sight of his umbrella-wielding stance. 

“Shut the fuck up, Richie, this is the best we _have_,” Eddie hisses under his breath. “I will let them eat you, I swear to God.”

Richie smirks knowingly and does a zipper motion over his mouth. Eddie’s pulse thuds in his ears.

Trying to ignore the shit-eating grin on Richie’s face, he finally takes a deep breath and crosses into the living room. Richie is behind him, so close that he’s nearly touching his back. Bev splits off and peeks into one of the bedrooms cautiously - not unlike a beast searching for its prey - before disappearing into it.

The living room is nothing special. There are two couches with a coffee table wedged between them; a pile of newspapers and mail strewn across the wooden surface. Whoever lived here seemed to have very few belongings or personal items, except for a few framed photos that were displayed on the mantle. It’s hard to say whether this was how it had always been, or if they took many of their possessions with them at the first sign of the fallout.

But nothing looked particularly messy or broken or out of place, which was a good sign for all three of them. If one of the occupants had left in a struggle or had been… sickened, Eddie would assume that there would be some sort of evidence like they’d seen back in the hallways. But, from what he can tell, there isn’t a single hair out of place.

“It looks safe here,” he says quietly. “Well, as safe as we can be, I guess.”

Richie picks up a picture frame off of the mantle to his left, and something in his expression flashes. He quickly puts it back where he had found it, face-down. Richie always had a hard time talking about his feelings seriously, but sometimes the façade faltered. Eddie could always tell when something was bothering Richie — he just tries not to comment on it too much. It’s probably a hard pill to swallow that they’re setting up shop in someone else’s house, in someone else's space, who may or may not be alive anymore.

It’s hard for Eddie to accept that fact, anyway. At least it’s a roof over their heads, and what seems like a viable shelter for the time being.

"Y’know, the only upside of all this is that your mom and I can be reunited again," Richie smirks, facing away from the mantle and back towards him. His mask is back on; hiding any hint of emotion that was there before. Eddie cocks an eyebrow.

"I don't think the infection resurrects the dead, dumbass," Eddie says, a smile playing at the edge of his lips. “It just.. Makes you seem dead - or whatever the fuck it does.”

He didn’t like to think about the specifics of what it does, so he trails off. Richie seems to share the same sentiment - at least that much is clear - and goes back to the topic he knows best.

“What a shame. She and I were soulmates,” he says. Eddie groans.

Bev returns from her search of the final bathroom with impeccable timing. She crosses the threshold empty-handed and injury-free - thank _God_ \- and shrugs at the two boys as she crosses the room. “All clear.”

Eddie lets out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding.

“Now c’mon, casanova,” Bev says, slapping Richie on the shoulder. “I’m going to need your help securing the front door.”

“Don’t miss me too bad, Eduardo,” Richie says, saluting and ducking into the doorway behind her.

Eddie watches the two of them as they disappear into the other room. It was odd how quickly the three of them fell into their old habits — of ‘your mom’ jokes and friendly jabs, that sometimes lead to serious conversations or nostalgic memories between them. It’s as if they picked up where they left off 27 years ago, end of the world be damned. It’s a sense of normalcy that Eddie needs in this sort of situation. 

“Be sure to look for supplies, Eddie!” Bev calls from the other room. He can start to hear the tell-tale sound of heavy furniture being dragged across the tile as they block off the front door. He shrugs his duffle bag off of his shoulder, and moves deeper into the apartment. 

Food should be the number one thing you should be searching for at the beginning of any survival situation, so it seems like the only logical option to start with the kitchen first. While traveling for his vacation, packing food was the last thing on his mind — especially since he already packed two suitcases specifically for his stay in Derry. He had everything he needed before, but only has one measly duffle bag to call his own now.

After pulling open the first cabinet, Eddie pauses. It’s filled to bursting with so many snacks that Eddie has frankly never even heard of, let alone eaten, but it’s food nonetheless. He pulls down all of the bags of chips, pretzels, and sweets, tucking them into a plastic bag that he found scrunched up on the kitchen counter.

The next cabinet is full of canned and boxed foods. There are multiple different types and brands, from Starkist tuna to Chef Boyardee to Hamburger Helper. It looks like a couple of things may have been taken in the apartment owner’s quick escape, but all of the food is sealed and is well within their expiration date, so he can’t complain too much. And, he figures, it’ll be better than eating chips all day.

The further he gets into the kitchen cabinets, though, the harder searching becomes. He finds a couple of extra things, like some little pieces of hard candy and a few cans of soda and bottled water, but everything else is bare.

By the end, Eddie feels like a spool of thread wound too tightly, going through the motions but ready to snap at a moment's notice. His hands shake as he goes through shelves, methodically picking up as many food-related items as he can. He has to sit back against one of the counters to take a breather after nearly dropping an entire bag of food on his toes.

If he was honest, Eddie had been a bundle of nerves since it all started. It turns out that when you have trauma-induced hypochondria, being in the Apocalypse started by a deadly viral disease does a number on you. His years of learning how to walk softly and silently over creaky floorboards or shabby tile was a valuable skill he never thought he'd use when he was older and away from his mother and had his own place, but here they are.

His own place. Eddie can’t even be sure that his house back in New York is still standing, let alone if Myra is safe. The phone lines were one of the first things to go after the initial fallout, so he wasn't able to contact the rest of the Losers or his wife. He realized while on the trip out and away from her that he never truly loved Myra -- not like a husband should, anyway -- but he never wanted her to be hurt or.. infected. The idea made his stomach churn.

Being with his second family (or part of them, anyway) certainly helped keep his mind off of it all, though. He'd met up with Richie and Bev at Bangor International only hours before they were supposed to meet up with the rest of the Losers, and mere hours before the first waves of infections completely took over the east coast. They’d been stuck together like glue ever since.

All three of them decided quickly that they had to get away from Bangor. Every car in the near vicinity had been taken, or crashed or was occupied, so the only option they had was to walk. On the way out of BIA, there had been a crowd of infected people- slow-moving and dumb, not those fast ones from movies or video games. They crowded around a poor bastard locked in his taxi, clawing and pounding on the metal vehicle so heavily that it rocked back and forth beneath their combined weight. It seemed they were only interested in two things; eating and surviving, broken down to their basic animalistic instincts.

The thought, frankly, scared Eddie to fucking death.

He thought of those people, pale and sickly green, with drool and blood and other unnerving liquids pouring out of their gaping mouths. Their eyes were blown and bloodshot but seemed to be staring into nothing — even when Eddie knew they were looking directly at him. He felt an intense jolt of panic - a fear that his mother had instilled in him from childhood. It told him to run, to get away, to do anything and everything to prevent yourself from being infected, but he couldn’t move. It took Bev grabbing his shoulder and shouting _‘Let’s go!’_ until his legs finally decided to move again.

At one point while escaping from the airport, they passed an obviously infected man missing part of his arm. That fact didn’t seem to phase him, though, and he only continued walking with a slow and wavering pace. When Richie tripping over a rock caught his attention, he could see that the man had gashes down his face so deep that Eddie swore he could see the pearly white of bone hidden beneath oozing red flesh. The sight of him was so shocking that Eddie felt almost numb upon his first glimpse. It almost didn’t seem real, even though he knew that it was. It _very much_ was.

After that, they saw infected or dead people so often that Eddie feared that he would quickly grow desensitized to the sight.

The three of them hadn’t seen anyone that they knew yet, but as they got closer to Derry, the fear and possibility was certainly there. He didn’t want to numb to that. 

He didn’t realize that his breathing was beginning to quicken until Richie startles him from his frazzled thoughts.

“Are you okay, Eds?”

“I—” Eddie starts, and then curses. His chest begins to feel tight and the familiar sensation of a knot rises into his throat, forcing him to grip the side of the counter for support. Dizziness swirls behind his eyes, and he screws them shut in order to keep himself upright. He hadn’t even considered ordering an inhaler to pick up before he entered Derry, but he was regretting that decision now. He knows his inhalers are bullshit, of course; but it’s something familiar to help ground him during his panic attacks.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look like you’re fine,” Richie says, concern obvious in those pale eyes of his. He moves to stand beside him, propping himself up on the counter like he often did as a teenager. He didn’t press when it came to Eddie’s panic attacks, not really, but he really was always there for him when he needed him. Richie’s hand rubs at the side of his shoulder idly, almost as if he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

“It’s just— this is a lot to take in. All of this shit.” Eddie says finally, sweeping his hands over the kitchen, trying to motion to everything. The trip to Derry, the sickness, the bodies. Everything.

“The kitchen? I mean, it is hideous, but--”

“No, Rich. The fucking apocalypse, started by a fucking _illness_. God, it’s like I can hear my mother echoing in my head. ‘Be careful, Eddiebear, be careful. Don’t let them bite you, sweetie.’” He mimics his mom’s voice the best he can and drops his head into one of his hands. “All I’m going to do is slow you guys down.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Richie says, putting his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “None of that shit, okay? We Losers stick together, and that means you, too.” His voice is suddenly more serious than Eddie had heard in quite a while. It seems like… like he really meant the words, and he wanted them to reach him. Eddie feels an odd fluttering in the pit of his stomach.

“We got this. I mean, fuck, Eddie, we have Bev,” Richie says. “I don’t think we can fuck up with her around.”

Eddie laughs, despite himself. “I guess you’re right there.”

“You’re damn right I am,” Richie says, winking at him. “But seriously, don’t worry, okay? I won’t leave you behind, and you won’t slow us down. We’re a team.”

Eddie can only nod at him silently. It feels like he doesn’t quite have the words to say to him; he isn’t used to Richie being this serious and so… genuine. So instead he keeps quiet and tries to focus on his breathing and getting it even again.

“Well, do you wanna check out the rest of the place with me? Bev wants us to try to find anything we can to take with,” Richie says, once it was obvious that Eddie had calmed down.

“What do we have left to check?” Eddie asks, wiggling the plastic bag of food in his hand. “I got the food, obviously.”

“Bev wants us to check for anything we can use as a weapon.” Richie pulls out two kitchen knives from the block on the counter. “Check.”

“Anything we can use in general… and, the medicine cabinet. Which I imagine you’d be knowledgeable on,” Richie continues, shrugging. Eddie hums.

“Well, let's drop these things in the living room and go look, then.”

After putting their current treasures on the coffee table in the living room, Richie and Eddie go to work. Richie dips into the bedroom Bev isn’t currently searching, and Eddie decides to go down to the end of the hall to search the bathroom. He finds a medicine cabinet behind the mirror, and luckily for them, it seems like it has most of the supplies they’ll need for the short term.

He pulls out some aspirin, some Neosporin, bandage wrappings, and a few other miscellaneous medications into another plastic bag and ties it off. That’ll be enough for minor injuries or aches, for at least the next few weeks if they’re lucky. It’s something that gives him a glimmer of hope and a sense of odd normalcy, like they had some sort of security blanket.

Another sweep of the bathroom yields a pair of scissors, tweezers, and some toothpaste. He ends up finding most of their basic necessities that would be helpful, and it gives him a little bit to work with in case things went awry. Only after he’s satisfied that he had found just about anything that he could out of the little room does he make his way back into the living room.

Waiting for him are Bev and Richie, who already made themselves at home on opposite ends of one of the couches. There are a couple of items spread between them, and they let out little hoots of victory when they spot the bag in Eddie’s hand.

“What did you find, Eddie?” Bev asks, sitting up to rest her elbows on her knees. Eddie drops the bag of medications on the coffee table and sits down on the couch. He groans, feeling all of himself relaxing reluctantly now that he can finally take a seat. It feels like he strained literally every muscle in his body, and he isn’t sure he ever wants to leave the couch now that he’s sat down on it.

“I found some painkillers, some Neosporin, and a few other things in the bathroom. It’ll get us through for a little while.” He motions toward the bag, and then asks, “You two?”

“Not much on my end. I found a few blankets, a few pairs of socks, and a lighter,” Richie lists, digging the lighter out of his pocket and offering it to Bev at the same moment that she says, “Gimme that.”

Bev flips the black lighter in her fingers and flicks the red button near the tip. A flame dances to live, and she grins. She turns her attention back to Eddie.

“I found a couple of things that might be helpful. I found two flashlights, a handful of batteries, a little bit of rope...” Bev counts on her fingers, thinking - looking a lot like she did when she was younger and dragging the rest of the Losers into a few of her plans. Then she lets out a sound, kind of like _‘oh!’_ and looks at Richie.

“And, a bat,” Bev says, sounding proud of herself. His eyes light up immediately. She throws her thumb over her shoulder, motioning to a baseball bat that’s leaning up against one of the kitchen counters.

“Aw, Bev, ya shouldn’t have.”

“We’re even,” she says, waving the lighter in between two fingers. She starts searching in the backpack that she brought with her, digging through the few belongings she had left. Eddie watches her for a moment, before pulling his knees up to his chest. All of this is so oddly normal, like they weren’t currently hiding from the literal end of the world.

“Eddie also forgot to mention he found an entire kitchen’s worth of munchies,” Richie says. “That are all mine now, obviously.”

Richie plucks a bag of Cheetos off of the pile and yanks them open with an obnoxiously loud noise to prove his point. Eddie stares at him.

“You can’t just eat all of the snacks, dude. I mean, what if the person who lives here comes back? Do you wanna tell them you ate their Cheetos?” Richie stares at him, Cheeto dust in his stubble, and sticks his tongue out at him.

A vein pulses in Eddie’s head. He hates this man. He hates that he calls this man his best friend. Eddie’s about to open his mouth when Bev’s voice cuts him off.

“Eddie, honey. I doubt these people are coming back,” she says, not unkindly. She leans back on her spot on the couch, lighting a cigarette while trying to get comfortable. Eddie wiggles away from her, staying downwind just in case he was in the trajectory of her smoke. “By the looks of the rooms, they took everything they could think of and got the hell outta here. Plus, we also… kind of dragged an entire dresser in front of the door,” she continues, smiling in a half-hearted, awkward kind of way. “I don’t think they’ll be able to get back in if they wanted to.”

“Double plus, Eds. It’s the zombie apocalypse. We gotta take care of ourselves,” Richie says, in-between bites. “That means we basically own these Cheetos, now.”

Eddie still isn’t quite convinced. He cocks an eyebrow and watches Richie eat his newly-claimed Cheetos. His body, however, is quite convinced of the idea, and his stomach betrays him with a growl. Eddie looks down at the floor, a blush slowly rising to his cheeks. The carpet is suddenly incredibly interesting, and he searches for any specks of dust or dirt that he can make an off-handed comment on - hoping that the noise wasn’t as loud as he thinks.

“I heard that,” Richie says, a glint of amusement in his eyes. He throws Eddie a pack of little pre-packaged cakes that he had found scattered throughout one of the cabinets earlier. By the looks of it, they are some sort of vanilla cake with chocolate drizzled over it. It wasn’t something Eddie would normally eat, but he’s hungry and desperate, and canned food would keep better on the road.

Plus, he hadn’t eaten since his flight out of JFK at daybreak. By now he’s starving, but the adrenaline had covered it up until he was able to smell food again. He slowly unwraps one of the cakes and takes a bite.

“Thanks, Rich.”

The three of them lay claim to their respective snacks and foods of choice, and quiet falls over the room. Darkness closes in outside of the window pane quickly, the evening disappearing in a blanket of dark blue and black. Even with the city mostly dark, Eddie can barely see any signs of moonlight, and he suddenly finds himself counting his lucky stars that they found shelter before they were stuck out there.

It wasn’t long, though, before Bev finally brings up the elephant in the room.

“So… what do you two want to do now?” she says, snuffing her cigarette on the bottom of her shoe. She’d already finished a can of ravioli and a small bag of chips and seems somewhat satisfied.

“I thought we might play a board game,” Richie says, grinning.

“Beep beep, Rich,” Eddie says, groaning. “What do you mean, Bev?”

“I mean, we have to have some sort of end game plan here, right? We definitely won’t be able to stay here forever. I think we can stay for a week at the most, and even then it might be better to get out before that point.” She takes in a deep breath. “Plus, we were already on the way to the rest of the Losers…” Trailing off, she looks down.

Bev is right. All three of them were heading towards Derry when it all went to shit. There is a heavy air between the three of them; an unspoken fear that the rest of the Losers might not be around when they finally got to Derry. There’s no guarantee that they’d still be there, after all. But Eddie knows they’re a strong bunch, and especially if the others made it to Derry, they would have all the support they need to survive. 

“I mean, I figured we’d keep heading there,” Richie says. “To Derry, I mean. We were already flying out to see everybody, and they’re gonna need our help now more than ever, so...”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, picking at his fingernails. “As fucked up as all this shit is, I feel like Derry is the safest place we can be. The Losers are the only people we can trust, at this point.”

He didn’t give much thought to the prospect of other people until this moment, and the fear of having other desperate survivors out there with them is a bit overwhelming. He squashes the thought before it can grow too big and swallow him into another panic attack. Bev hums thoughtfully across from him.

“It does seem like our best option,” she agrees. “It’ll be a bit of a trek from here on foot, but if we find a car it’ll be a lot easier.”

A car would be a hot commodity at this point if you didn’t have one, so he doubts that they’d find a useable one anytime soon. But she’s right - it would be worth looking for as soon as they could. It should cut their travel time immensely.

“But either way, it’s late now. We should all get some sleep.” Bev looks out the window, out at the inky black sky and all of the chaotic bullshit below. Her blue eyes seem far away for a moment before she turns back to the two of them.

“One of us should keep watch while the other ones sleep, and then switch off,” she suggests. Richie and Eddie agree in quiet murmurs.

“Just in case.” Her voice carries a hint of unease that Eddie knows they all have to be feeling.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Richie offers, stretching noisily. “I’m still stuck in L.A. time, so I’m not exactly tired yet. You two get some sleep, and I’ll poke you in a few hours.”

Something tells Eddie that it’s a little bit more than simple jetlag that’s keeping Richie up, but he doesn’t want to press too hard. Instead, he simply nods in agreement and he and Bev share a lingering glance.

“Do you mind if I sleep in here while you stay up?” he says. He hates how quiet he sounds even to his own ears. “I don’t want to sleep by myself. Like, in a different room, not like—”

“We should all stay here,” Bev says, a little too hastily, at the same time that Richie says, “We should stick together,”

It seems like they all have the same idea. All three of them erupt into laughter when Bev says, “Sleepover!”

Bev disappears into one of the bedrooms and returns soon after with three fluffy pillows. Eddie scrunches his nose at the idea of sleeping on a pillow that a random person had also slept on in the last 24 hours, but Bev throws one at him anyway. She makes herself comfortable on the other couch, and with a mischievous glint in her eyes, she purposefully tickles at Richie’s leg with a wiggle of her toes. He retaliates by grabbing onto her foot, holding it prisoner, with a triumphant grin on his face. Bev and Eddie howl in laughter as she struggles to wriggle out of his grasp. 

Eventually, the three of them calm down enough to where quiet settles over the room once more. Bev slings one of her arms over the side of the couch and wraps herself up in what Richie affectionately calls a ‘blanket burrito’ before she finally gets comfortable

“G’night, Losers,” Bev says, once she’s settled in and her voice is heavy with sleep. “Wake me in two hours and I’ll take over, Richie.”

Richie makes a sound of agreement.

Eddie tugs at one of the throw blankets that had been draped over the back of the couch and twists himself into it. It isn’t the warmest blanket on earth and it reminds him of the shitty ones your friends parents give you at sleepovers, but it’s good enough for now. He settles into the soft cushions, curling up into a fetal position. When he looks back up he sees Richie staring out the window, expression unreadable. He has the bat draped over his lap now, at the ready if he needs it at a moment’s notice.

If there was one thing Eddie could take solace in, at least he wouldn’t be all alone during the end of the world.

He closes his eyes, finally feeling safe enough to properly relax, and sleep takes him faster than he thought possible.


	2. The Lighthouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all! I really wanted to poke a little more into this AU, so I went ahead and did another chapter. I'm still not 100% sure how long this one will be, so I'm going to keep the chapters at ? for now. 
> 
> Warning - The violence/gore/depiction of illness is a teensy bit more intense in this chapter. Nothing _too_ horrible, but beware if that bothers you.

It’s been a long time since Eddie has properly talked to someone. In the past, most of his social interactions consisted only of high-ranking company men or their lawyers, blabbering on about their businesses or ideas. There wasn’t much room in between work for casual visiting, even _if_ Eddie was interested in the prospect. Eddie liked his job fine, sure, but his clients and employers never were the most interesting company. He had friends, too - from college or co-workers that he got beers with - but he was so busy that he couldn’t remember the last time he saw them. And if he was honest with himself, he could barely remember any of their names in the first place.

But with Bev and Richie, conversation came easily. It felt like no time passed between them, not really, and it was a comfort that Eddie took for granted before.

Catching up was even easier.

From what he could tell, the three of them had the same idea and got as far away from Derry as possible. Well, the other two did, at least. Eddie ended up waiting until he was college-aged and moved out to New York. It was close enough that his mother wouldn’t complain too much, but far enough away that he felt like he could finally _breathe._

Soon enough, Derry was a distant memory in the rear-view mirror of his life, and he moved on the best he could.

Or he liked to think so, anyway.

Richie had become a stand-up comedian, a fact that Eddie knew before Richie even brought it up. One of the first things that he did after Mike’s call (and after contacting his insurance company for the claim on his car, of course) was google Richie Tozier. He convinced himself that he was only interested in learning about Richie specifically because he was the closest to him as a kid… and not for the fluttering warmth that spread through him at the mere mention of his name.

He spent a few hours searching through Youtube videos and Netflix specials, listening to his comedy and just... watching. But honestly, the Richie he knew (and the one he spent the last day talking to) was much funnier than the one he saw in Youtube videos.

Richie, being the funnyman he is, seemed fucking _tickled_ when he learned Eddie’s profession. He -- and the rest of the Losers with him -- always assumed that Eddie would go on to be a doctor, or a researcher, or something more... _cool_. The truth was, though, his hypochondria and lack of self-confidence prevented him from ever pursuing it. The idea of being around sick people all day also made his skin crawl. 

Being a risk analyst paid well, anyway, and it was the safer option of the two.

And then there was Bev. Admittedly, Eddie didn’t know much about the other Losers’ career choices (for obvious reasons), so he’s pleasantly surprised when Bev explains that she was one of the heads of a fashion line. Even in their school days, she spoke about all manners of dress and her dreams of making designs that could make it big. The special way her eyes lit up when she talked about it kept Eddie listening even back in Derry, even with his usual disinterest in fashion magazines or clothing. Her eyes still sparkle in that special way, years later, when she mentions the fashion aspects of her company and all the intricacies related to it.

Until she brought up her husband and business partner, that is. She acted as if she slipped a deep, dark secret at the mention of his name. Looking deflated, that passionate light flickered off for a brief moment until she composed herself. Her reaction and bare ring finger make Eddie think that their situation is less than sunshine and rainbows, so he decides not to press the subject further.

"You know, I haven't heard of Rogan-Marsh until now," Richie says thoughtfully. "No offense, Bev.” he adds, when he spots her cocked eyebrow.

“Really? I would have _never_ guessed,” she replies, pointedly looking him up and down. A small smile pulls at the corners of her mouth.

"Oh ho ho, fuck you, Marsh - this is _chic_," he says, motioning to his clothes with a dramatic sweep of his hand.

"Chic-en shit, maybe," Eddie smirks back over his shoulder at Richie, who gapes at him.

“Come here, you little turd!” Richie calls, running towards him in a full-blown sprint. Before he can even react, Richie is on him, his arm twisted around his body, free hand ruffling his hair. He’s surprisingly strong for a bastard as lanky as he is, and Eddie feebly wiggles against his grip.

“Get off, you fucking sasquatch!”

“_Sasquatch?_ That’s a new one, Eds. I’m impressed,” Richie says with a laugh, making no effort to loosen his grip on Eddie’s shoulders.

This is going to be a long trip.

* * *

“So where we heading, anyway, Spaghetti-O?” Richie strides up beside him, looping his thumbs under the straps of his own backpack.

Pointedly ignoring Richie’s “new” nickname for him, Eddie looks down at the map he had snatched from the pocket of a car seat a few blocks back, furrowing his brow.

“If we started at the airport,” he starts, pointing his finger at BIA before trailing his finger down one of the highways they used for landmarks. “We would be somewhere around here, if I had to guess.” He taps the folded paper in emphasis.

Bev and Richie look over opposite sides of his shoulders, watching his directions carefully. Eddie chews on his lip, thinking. Statistically speaking, going directly down any highways should be avoided as much as possible due to the extra traffic during an evacuation. That meant more car pile-ups and more groups of people. And more... 

Eddie takes a deep breath. Going through the wilderness is worse, though. So taking side roads might be their best bet.

“So the best path to Derry would be across the bridge here.” He leads the path with his index finger, briefly stopping at the small cross-section that’s labeled with _Narrows Bridge_. They’ll have to get on the highway to cross the bridge, but at least they won’t be following it for too long. He then uses his finger to follow one of the back roads, leading directly into downtown Derry. “See?”

Richie whistles.

“That way we’d be ignoring the major roads,” Bev muses. “As much as we can, at least. Smart, Eddie,” she nods slowly, getting more confident with each word. 

“You really should have been a mapologist. That would be a way cooler job than a piss analyst,” Richie says, his lips curled into a crooked smile.

“Can we leave him behind? I’d love to leave him behind,” Eddie says, a smile playing at the edge of his lips.

* * *

By the time they reach the bridge that would take them across the river towards Derry, the sun is beginning to set.

Following Eddie’s suggestion, the three of them avoid most of the major roads and highways. As they cross an open field and onto the main road, that proved to be the right idea. The highway that intersects with the bridge is completely jammed with vehicles, long since forgotten. Clustering together like train cars, they form a sea of metal that is nearly impenetrable, leaving only narrow sections of space between them. 

Eddie breathes a sigh of relief when they take the wide path away from the road, electing to take a small footpath by the river instead. Sure, it’s the long way around, but it’ll be well worth it.

The sight that meets them when they reach the bridge’s anchor makes his blood run cold. Bev sucks in a deep breath to his left.

Like the highway that feeds into it, the bridge is gridlocked. Cars are stacked in a tangle of steel and tires, strewn haphazardly in many different directions. Occasionally Eddie can see brief glimpses of movement in between them; shadows and silhouettes that are barely discernible against the purple glow of twilight. They’re as scattered as the vehicles in front of them. He can only imagine how much of a nightmare it would be to try and navigate between the metal coffins in the low light.

The small footpaths that line either side of the bridge aren’t an option, either. The tiny sidewalks are blocked by bikes and other personal belongings, abandoned as hastily as the cars were. Eddie figures it would be best not to run through a damn obstacle course at night, either. Not when the predators lurking in the dark were a million times worse than your common black bear. And at least black bears aren’t covered in mucus and drool and slime.

Eddie can envision coughing bodies and grabbing, cold fingers searching for purchase - searching for something to relieve their bloodlust. His mind unwittingly fills with images of the dead lurking beneath their stalled cars, clawing against the asphalt with empty stares and slack jaws. The thought alone makes him shudder.

“I have a bad fucking feeling about this,” he says, glancing at Bev and Richie. They look back at him with looks of equal unease. 

As if to emphasize his point, a rhythmic thumping noise drifts over the steel line of vehicles. It’s an eerie pounding of a fist on metal, of someone begging to be let in - or out. But Eddie would rather cut his own arm off than actually go investigate _that._

The night is unpredictable as it is. But adding mindless, aggressive creatures into the mix? It had turned the darkness into a true nightmare.

“No really, Eds. What tipped you off first? The pile-up, or the shambling bros?” Richie says. Eddie has to resist the urge to slap him.

“Richie, you’re the only person on planet Earth that would call fucking _zombies_ shambling bros. What the fuck, dude?” Eddie huffs. 

“I mean… they do shamble,” Bev offers, her lips pulled up in a slight smile. 

There’s a heartbeat of silence between them as they linger at the foot of the bridge. Eddie mourns the loss of his perfect plan as he turns and follows Bev and Richie, who have since resumed walking. 

“The bridge is the best way into Derry, though, right Eddie?” Bev questions after a moment, looking uneasy. “Do we have any other options?”

“Not really. Not unless you want to swim.”

The three of them look at the gurgling water below. Swimming was definitely not an option.

“So what now? Are we gonna have a little boy scout camp out by the river, or what?” Richie says. Eddie can see uneasiness in the way he’s fidgeting with the plastic buckle of his backpack, even through his jokes.

Silence spreads between them again. They walk beside the river again, with no direction in mind other than ‘away from the bridge’. Eddie watches his feet with each step, thinking.

With his plan turned on its head, he’s at a loss. He’d put all of his thoughts into crossing the bridge half-way and staying in one of its observation towers and didn’t even consider the fact that the bridge might be fucking _blocked._

“Lighthouses have little sleeping areas, right?” Bev says, out of the blue. “Where the custodian sleeps?”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “I’m not a lighthouse expert, but I guess. Why?”

“Look.”

He follows her gaze. Sure as shit, there’s a lighthouse in the distance. Seated on a sharp cliff a little ways ahead of them, towering a few stories over the riverbank below. The structure’s red and white paint is accentuated brightly by the hues of the setting sun behind it. It looked like some sort of cheesy postcard that was made to lure unsuspecting saps into visiting the hellhole that was his home state. 

Ridiculous appearance aside, it was a roof over their heads. That’s all that Eddie could hope for, even if it meant taking a little bit of a detour. 

“Well,” Eddie says. “I guess it’s better than nothing.”

The three of them make it to the lighthouse in record time. Eddie jogs ahead at the lead, wanting nothing more than to be away from the path to hell that is the Narrows Bridge. 

With each step towards the structure, Eddie can feel a memory pulling at the corner of his mind. He can remember glimpses of school yard chatter, green grass swaying beside the riverbank, and the feeling of excitement of getting to see something new and fresh. 

Eddie stalls at the foot of the tall building’s steps, thinking.

“Didn’t we go on a field trip here one time, Rich?” Eddie says, chewing on his bottom lip. The memories are hazy, and he reaches for them desperately. It was like he was putting the pieces of the world’s shittiest puzzle together and getting closer piece by piece. “In like, fifth grade?”

Finally, the final puzzle piece fits snugly in the gaps in his memory, and the remaining details crash over him like a tidal wave. 

He’s drowned by memories of sharing a Walkman with Richie on the bus ride over, watching the towns pass by out the window. Both of them spent a little too much time pointing out landmarks and points of interest to Stan, who craned his neck from the next aisle over to see anyway. Stan, with his tight-lipped expression, still seemed more than happy to be included in their shenanigans. It took a whole 10 minutes of mock-competitions, arguments, and chaos before Mrs. Decker finally broke and decided to separate them.

It took barely five minutes for Eddie, with his big brown doe eyes, to convince her to let him hang out with Richie again, though. 

Eddie also remembers the awe-inspired look on Richie’s face when they’d reached the top of the tower and looked out at the water for the first time. His eyes were even bigger behind his glasses, somehow, and he looked like he was truly seeing how big the river was for the very first time. Stan stood close by, happily searching the riverbank for signs of any birds below. 

Richie considers for a moment. For a second Eddie swears that he’s gonna tell him he’s full of shit, until recognition flashes over his face.

“Oh my God, we totally fucking did!” He agrees finally, slapping Eddie on the shoulder. “Stan looked like he was going to puke when we first got up to the deck.” 

“Didn’t _you_ barf when we got up there?” 

“Details, schmetails, Eds.”

“Are you two going to sit out here and bicker all day?” Bev says, amused. “I mean, we don’t have much day left.” She motions to the setting sun. 

“Coming, ma,” Richie says, lovingly. They climb the steps two-by-two, eager to get out of the darkness that was quickly closing in. 

When they reach the heavy wooden door at the base of the candy-caned tower, though, Eddie feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.  
The door is ajar. If he wasn’t on such high alert he might have completely missed it, but something about it seemed off. He remembered having to haul that old wooden door open with all 65 pounds of his. It wasn’t something that just opened on its own. 

“Well, that definitely says, ‘Welcome! Come on in!’” Richie says, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Since I'm guessing this door isn’t supposed to be open.” Bev pulls a kitchen knife out from her pack. “We should be careful.” 

“Ready?” she asks. Eddie curtly nods and Richie just grins, gripping tighter at his bat. That was all the confirmation she needed.

She pulls up her fingers, holding up three and ticking down to two, one...

The door opens wider with a heavy creak. The interior of the lighthouse still looks the same as it did all those years ago, complete with the same peeling paint job. Unlike his last visit, though, it’s eerily quiet. The wide-spread power outages plunged the tower in darkness, making it difficult to discern little details in the low light. The little windows that lined the spiral staircase only helped so much.

“This isn’t creepy at all,” Richie comments. 

Bev clicks on her flashlight. She takes a sweep across the room, checking for any signs of danger. Under the beam of light, Eddie can see a few familiar objects; an old, battered table, a small brochure stand, and an old wooden bench. Then, to their left, they’re able to see the beginning of the iron steps that lead up to the lighthouse’s observation deck. Finally deeming it safe to continue, they start to approach the staircase.

Around the first curve on their path up, though, they spot it: a dark shape a bit further ahead, hunkered down against the steps.

Eddie’s hand automatically reaches to grasp at Richie’s jacket, rooting him in place. He can feel his hands start to shake when Bev’s flashlight falls on the shape. Lying on the staircase ahead was what was obviously one of the infected. The three of them quietly inch closer, watching for any sign of movement.

The closer they get, the sicker he feels.

The beam of the flashlight washes out the… _thing’s_ pale skin even further, making it look almost translucent against the iron steps. Bluish veins twist like spider webs across the creature’s face and neck, spreading down into purple bruises that disappear below the collar of its tattered clothing. Its body is twisted up in an awkward, broken way - as if it had crumpled all the way down the stairs like a balled-up piece of paper. A dent in the front of its head obscured one of its eyes almost completely and twisted its neck in a horrible, crooked way. 

Eddie swallows down the bile that rises to the back of his throat and tries to ignore the echoing voice of his mother that blares in the back of his mind. _Be careful, Eddiebear. Be careful._

“Well, that’s a good sign,” Richie says, kicking carefully at one of the infected’s outstretched arms. It flops, uselessly. “At least it’s dead,” he mumbles, shrugging.

“Thank you, Richie. We definitely knew it was fucking dead. But thank you for the reminder.”

Richie looks like he’s going to retort before Bev shushes them and shines her light on something else in the distance. Her voice is so quiet - so gentle. “Another one.”

A few paces ahead of them, on the curve of the lighthouse staircase, is another body. It’s leaning against the railing, arms slotted through the metal bars and dangling over empty air. They inch closer to its stilled form, and Richie makes a sort of disgusted sound as they reach it.

Its teeth are sunk deep into a chunk of wood of some variety, locking its stiff jaws shut. Said wood seems to have broken against its mouth, lodging prickly splinters in its lips and gums. It’s folded awkwardly on itself, setting it almost into a sitting position on the iron steps. And just like the other one, it looks like it was dispatched with a blow to its head.

The sight of the thing made his stomach flip. Its pale skin and sunken eyes bring him back to Mr. Keene’s basement, and the terror he felt locked in the claustrophobic space. Of his mother calling for him, begging for him to help her, and the leper advancing on the two of them.

Flashes of memories of It and the leper race through his mind, diseased and shambling and _wrong._

And he just bailed. At the first sign of danger, he left his own fucking mother behind. Even if it wasn’t truly her -- Pennywise was a bitch like that -- he feels a lead ball of guilt in the pit of his stomach. 

Even now, he feels the need to run - to get away. But this time is different. He has to believe this time is different. 

“What the fuck is with these things?” Eddie says, his voice low and quivering. His hands shake against Richie’s jacket, holding onto him like he was the only thing keeping him from bolting. Richie’s own fingers pull at the bottom of Eddie’s hoodie, pulling him a little closer. 

He always let Eddie hold onto him. Richie always reached out to him, too - like he needed that extra contact to ground him. Even when they were kids he was always there, reaching out for him or holding him. He suddenly remembered dozens of times that Richie grabbed onto him to comfort him, or to comfort himself in some way. 

When he was younger, he sometimes worried about how clingy Richie was with him. He never minded the affection or physical contact himself, but he was more concerned with the more aggressive residents of Derry. But if any of the other Losers realized their more physical friendship, they didn’t seem to mind it. They never acted like it was weird or wrong, like some of the other townspeople might have.

But now that he was an adult, in this dark lighthouse, Eddie feels much more comfortable with holding onto him. Bev, as always, doesn’t react oddly to their situation when she glances back at him. 

“I don’t know,” Bev says, honestly. She checks the infected’s corpse with a gentle prodding of her foot and sighs in relief when it doesn’t move. “But I don’t think we have many choices other than this.” 

“Not unless we wanna go camping.” Richie agrees. 

They were right. As much as he fucking hated to admit it, with the night closing in, this was the only option they had for shelter. 

“Of course we’d get stuck in the fucking zombie apocalypse in a murder tower,” Eddie says, shuffling in place. “Fucking fantastic.” 

The three of them climb the tower slowly, each iron step echoing beneath the weight of their bodies. The pale glow of Bev’s flashlight casts an eerie light over the rickety railings, illuminating trails of yellow in the darkness. They’re silent for once, straining their ears for any sign of anything amiss. Eddie’s much jumpier than usual, and he’s forced to stifle a girly scream when a pigeon flutters from it’s tangled nest tucked in one of the nearby windowsills. 

Eddie swore there weren’t this many fucking stairs when he went on his fifth-grade class field trip. By the time that they’d trudged half way up the spiral staircase, it felt like his knees were on fire, begging to be released from their ascension into hell. But still, they pushed on, passing trails of blood and splinters on the way up. 

At some point, Eddie reached out for Bev, too. He almost pulls away at the last moment, but Bev doesn’t miss a beat and laces her fingers with his. She smiles back at him and squeezes his fingers warmly. The three of them trudge on forward, holding each other close in an awkward sort of pretzel knot. If they weren’t in the creepiest place on planet fucking earth, Eddie might have been a little bit embarrassed. 

At the top of the spiral staircase is yet another door. Eddie knew from their previous field trip that it led to a small, cramped room that led to the observation deck above. If he had to guess, the room at one point probably housed a lighthouse keeper rather uncomfortably. But the last time he visited, it was used as a little visitor’s center to show school-aged kids the inner workings of the structure. 

It certainly wasn’t ideal for a shelter, but really, nothing about their situation was. 

“We don’t know what the hell is going to be in here,” Bev says, quietly. “Careful.” 

The door opens with a gentle push from Bev. She shines her flashlight into the door frame, illuminating the room in a pale light. 

Inside, the room is completely circular, with a single ladder that leads up to the observation deck above. There isn’t much in the way of furniture, but it’s obvious that someone else had the idea to use the small room for shelter before they had. There are a couple of pillows and a small bag tucked out of the way beneath a wooden desk. On top of the surface, there’s some sort of rake, with a handle that was broken off about mid-way through. Splinters of wood are littered across the metal floor. Along with the splinters, there's some sort of coiled, white ribbon that Eddie can’t identify. 

“I guess we found what they used on the bastards down there.” Richie offers, quietly. 

Wind whips against the deck above them, making a low, almost moan-like sound against the metal above. 

But other than the survival supplies, there isn’t much else to write home about. No odd pounding sounds, no groans, nothing. Eddie breathes a sigh of relief. 

Content with the silence, Eddie steps into the small room. On the opposite side, against the wall, there's a small closet that’s open with a few tools; to upkeep the exterior of the tower, probably. 

“There’s a closet over here,” Eddie says. “Let’s go ahead and put our shit in here--” 

An explosion of sound to his right catches him off guard. 

Eddie turns on his heel and finds himself face to face with one of the infected. By the look of its bright red-and-white uniform and an off-kilter ball cap to match, at one point the zombie must have been some sort of lighthouse tour guide. It’s got a nasty gash from the side of its face down to its collarbone, deep enough to expose tendons and bone. It makes a low, almost gurgling sound as it leans in, grabbing onto his hoodie and tearing upwards. It’s joints crack and move unnaturally, its mind too diluted by sickness to mind the pain of twisting its arms too far. Eddie curses, higher-pitched than normal, flailing against its grasp. 

It was sick. With translucent skin and unfocused eyes and disgusting, sharp teeth, it was fucking _ill_. Unlike the leper which was one of Pennywise’s shitty games, this was real. They really didn’t know anything about the virus, but here it was, staring him right in the fucking face. 

He can vaguely hear Bev and Richie calling out to him as the thing pushes him closer to the wall, with twisting fingers grabbing at every inch of his skin that it could reach. It’s rotting tendons squelch when it opens its mouth, snapping hungrily towards his nose. He feels bile burn at his tonsils as strings of spit connect his jaws, coming closer to his face with each lunge. 

“What the fuck, you shitty asshole?” Eddie calls over the creature’s disgusting sounds, his fear quickly replaced with the urge to fight. He twists his elbow underneath its chin, pushing back with every ounce of strength he can muster. It staggers backward for only a moment before pushing forward again. Mindlessly searching with the urge to bite, to tear, to kill. 

But then the weight of it is off of him in an instant. 

“Get the _fuck_ off of him, you cock monk!” Richie bellows, knocking his weight hard into the zombie’s side. He pushes his bat in between the zombie’s clicking jaws, and it clamps down obediently. With its mouth now subdued, the thing has the audacity to look fucking shocked when Richie pushes against it. 

He yanks backward, jerking his bat away from its jaws. With a hand twisted in the zombie’s shirt, he uses all of his weight to shove it away from him. 

Almost in slow motion, the zombie falls back over itself, teeth gnashing wildly. But it stumbles on the last step and topples into one of the room’s windows, and the glass shatters underneath the creature’s sudden weight. The pieces of glass shimmer against the sunset and the momentum has it tumbling out the newly-opened frame. 

There’s a sickening, wet crash as it lands onto the rocks below.

“I guess he didn’t like us dropping in, huh?” Richie says, a crooked smile on his face. 

And then, he promptly vomits out the shattered window. 

Eddie slides against the wall onto the ground, every inch of his body on fire. He pulls his knees up to his chest, shuddering out a shaky breath. He could feel the familiar hand of terror tightening around his throat, constricting his breathing. He gasps out, feeling tears spring up to his eyes. 

It was ill. What if it passed it off to him? Holy shit, it nearly got him. He nearly died. What if, _what if-- _

“Eddie, honey. Are you hurt?” Bev asks, gently. Her voice stirs him from the static in his mind.

“Eds, Eds-- are you okay? It didn’t get you, right?” Richie flies to his other side, bending down onto his knees. “That was amazing, dude. You totally fought it,” he adds, his face lit up in a way that made Eddie’s heart squeeze.

Bev and Richie are at his side, now. They’re both crouching to carefully look him over. Bev gently pulls at both of his arms, investigating the length of his hoodie sleeves. 

The way they inspected him was drastically different than how his mother looked him over when he was a child. She always seemed to be searching for illness or injury in a way that could benefit her somehow in some sick, twisted way. She looked at him like an ant under a microscope, rather than a child with a scratched knee. 

But Richie and Bev were different than she was. There was care and love behind their careful examining of him; his hoodie, his hands, his skin. They cared about him and didn’t want him to be hurt. They weren’t checking him for his own selfish gain. 

He feels a swell of affection balloon in his chest. He focuses on his breathing, breathing in, and out. In... out. 

He looks up at the two of them then, really _looks at them_. It was like in an instant, he was transported back in time to their days in Derry. In the Neibolt house, where Richie had stayed with him even when Pennywise was threatening to devour them both. When Beverly came from thin air, thrusting a rusted fence post through the creature’s head, distracting It long enough for them to gain control of the situation. But they weren’t kids anymore. They were adults now, years later, facing another unholy challenge. 

But here they were, still with him. There to save his skin when he couldn’t do it himself.

“I’m fine, you two.” For the first time in what seemed like years, he said he was fine and he meant it. Sure, adrenaline surged through his body in an uncomfortable jitter and he felt like he was going to have to train himself to breathe again, but somehow he was fine. 

He felt fucking _alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all like this one as much as I do! It was a challenge, but I had so much fun working on it. <3 <3 <3 
> 
> For reference, the bridge I used in this one is based on the [Penobscot Narrows Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penobscot_Narrows_Bridge_and_Observatory). I'm not 100% sure where Derry lies in my canon but it's definitely over the river from Bangor!


	3. The Observation Deck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a little note right away, since "pallet" is apparently a weird regional word, [this is what I'm describing when I talk about a pallet.](http://codetuple.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/floor-blankets-wholesale-pallet-idea-2-put-on-1-3-thin-teddy.jpg)
> 
> Also, this is a sort-of late birthday present to @pngdraws!! Happy birthday, Al! Thank you for inspiring some more character-focused writing. 💖

It doesn’t take the three of them long to get the lighthouse keeper’s belongings out of the shabby observation room. After learning what became of the tour guide (and _especially_ after the infected’s assault on Eddie), they had little desire to continue looking at his belongings.

They unceremoniously dump a lot of the soiled belongings over the edge of the guard rail until they tumble off into the distance, out of sight. Eddie’s eyes watch the bundles fall with a pang of guilt, and he whispers an apology to someone who he knows full well can no longer hear him. He turns back toward the keeper’s quarters.

Eddie takes his time disinfecting any areas they’d be touching for the night before he finally allows Bev and Richie to unpack their things. He couldn’t shake the idea of the infected stumbling through the room, getting its disgusting, grubby hands all over everything and cleaning was the only way he knew to shake away the nervous energy. So, he cleaned. Richie and Bev simply watch him scrubbing the desk with a disinfectant wipe, eyebrows cocked.

“You’re gonna make it smell like a hospital or grandma’s house in here, Eddie,” Richie says with a smug look, leaning against one of the metal beams of the room.

“What kind of grandma’s house have you been in?” Eddie furrows his brow. “These are just disinfectant wipes, asshole, and they’re good for you. It’s a good idea to clean when you’re sharing a space with a sick person, okay? Plus, I mean, you don’t know where his hands had been before he-- well, before he was that--”

“I have one idea where his hands might have been.” Richie says, smirking.

“_Rich_, oh my God,” Bev laughs. 

“Dude, are you serious?” Eddie says. 

Richie only shrugs, and with a roll of his eyes, Eddie returns to his cleaning.

“Is there anything you need me to do?” Richie says after a moment, more genuinely this time. His leg is bouncing in the way Eddie knows means he’s full of excess energy. He sighs.

“Can you two check the door one more time? Just.. to be certain.”

Despite the fact that he’d already asked them to check the two front doors once, both of his companions don’t miss a beat and nod in unison. He feels the sting of guilt, sending them down all of those stairs again, but he rationalizes that he’s only being cautious.

He did get attacked not even an hour ago, after all.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Kaspbrak, sir,” Richie says, this time in the Voice of what Eddie could only assume is supposed to be a soldier. He salutes before he and Bev disappear out of the room and begin yet another trip down the never-ending stairs.

Eddie takes in a deep breath. Now satisfied that he got as much of the disgusting residue as he humanly could, he works on unpacking some of their things. He gathers their sleeping bags first and makes a make-shift pallet on the ground tucked beside one of the observation walls. It felt like eons since he last made this sort of shabby bedding, but the room is simply too small for any of them to stretch out in their sleeping bags. Especially Richie, who turned into some sort of fucking giant since the last time Eddie saw him.

It certainly won’t be the most comfortable place to sleep, but at least it’ll be something.

As soon as he finishes up, the doors swing open. He glances up at Richie and Bev, who look completely normal - just as they had been, much to his relief. “It’s all locked up, Eddie,” Bev says, a warm smile on her face. “No one’s getting in here without us knowing.”

Richie pauses in the doorway, his blue eyes staring down at the single pile of blankets. Something flashes behind his eyes before a grin spreads across his face.

“What, you’re wanting to spoon, Eds? I mean, I’m already committed to one Kaspbrak, but I’ll do it.”

“You’re literally all bones, man. I might as well be cuddling a spoon,” Eddie shoots back, glancing up from his spot on the floor.

“Oh trust me, I’m bony where it counts.” Richie’s eyes glint in challenge. Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose. His heart begins to beat against his ribs, and he convinces himself it’s a side-effect of the insufferable company of Richie and not any other... _incriminating_ reason.

“I can sleep in the middle,” Bev says, grinning at him. “You can both cuddle _me._”

“No. I’m not going to spoon either of you, Jesus Christ,” Eddie says above Richie’s roaring laughter.

“Suit yourself. I, for one, am an amazing cuddle partner,” Richie says, a little red-faced from laughter. He flings his pack into a corner of the tiny room unceremoniously.

He stretches exaggeratedly, before turning back to Bev.

“Bev, can I…?” Richie motions with two fingers towards his mouth. Eddie can imagine the cigarette hanging between them as he gestures towards her. Bev rolls her eyes.

“Always bumming off of me,” she says, amusement in her voice. She trudges toward her pack, digging through it for a few moments before pulling out a nearly-full pack of cigarettes. “But I need one, too. C’mon.”

Bev climbs the metal ladder toward the observation deck with Richie close on her heels, sort of like an eager puppy. Eddie takes one last glance at the door -- just to be _sure_ \-- before he follows behind them, pulling himself up through the hatch and into the cool night air.

The observation deck, like everything else, is exactly the same as he remembers it. From the metal flooring to the widely spaced rails it’s painted a blaringly bright, firetruck red, complete with the same peeling paint from years past. Everything in Maine seems like it’s stuck in time, keeping him trapped in a nostalgic sort of hellhole.

Turning around, he sees Richie and Bev tilting close toward each other, standing on the far edge and leaning against the rails. Their hands cup protectively over their respective cigarettes, and Eddie can hear the quiet click, click, click of the lighter between them.

Richie makes a triumphant sound when his cigarette finally glows to life.

“Fucking finally,” he says, breathing in deeply. He blows out a heavy puff of smoke. “Thanks, Bev. I owe you one.”

“You owe me about twenty.” She winks at him, taking a drag herself. “But we all need one right about now, so I’ll let it slide this time.”

Eddie walks across the flooring toward them, listening to the low echo of metal beneath his shoes. He bends down, slotting his legs in between one of the railings, looking over the river below.

“Everyone but me, sure.” Eddie smirks, looking up at her.

“Don’t smoke, it’s bad for you,” Richie says, nodding slowly as he takes another drag.

“It’s terrible for your health,” Bev agrees.

Bev sits next to him with a healthy distance between. Even as kids she was careful not to smoke too close to him, because even if his asthma was one of Eddie’s mom’s bullshit illnesses, no one wanted to take the chance. It was just polite, regardless. She blows a cloud of gray in the opposite direction and presses her forehead against the railing. Crossing her legs, she takes a deep drag as she settles in.

Eddie never did know what to say in these sorts of situations. Weirdly enough, smoking never bothered him, per se, but the risk of cancer was just too great for him to even try. Even without his mother’s nagging memory in the back of his mind, the research and statistics were always simply too terrifying to even test it.

But with Bev and Richie, it looked so natural. It looked almost… cool. The two of them sit closer to each other, shrouding each other in puffs of smoke. Richie blows smoke directly over her face - tickling her forehead - and she howls with laughter as she slaps his arm.

Eddie can’t help but smile as he watches the two of them.

Twilight bleeds into darkness, blanketing the sky in ribbons of dark blue and violet. With the wide-spread power outages, it’s inkier than Eddie remembers it ever being - even as a kid. With the overwhelming darkness, he can see heavy swaths of stars, clustered together like webs of sparkling diamonds. The vaguest of memories - no, it’s less tangible; rather, it’s more like a feeling - tugs at him upon noticing the speckles so far away. It’s almost too hazy to recognize, but Eddie feels a nostalgic warmth. The tiniest smile appears on his lips.

His brief moment of peace is quickly revealed to be only temporary, though. Out on the horizon is the bright glow of orange that could only have been caused by a fire. It’s too far east to be from Derry, most likely, but by the size of the glow and smoke clouds it must be a whole fucking city on fire. It’s the only glimpse of light as far as he can see, an ominous beacon in the darkness.

He can’t help but wonder if that’s going to be - or even already been - the fate of every city remaining, now. Richie’s voice cuts through the silence before he’s able to get too carried away with the thought.

“So,” Richie says, blowing out a cloud of gray. “That was a shitshow. That nonsense from earlier, that is.”

“You can say that again,” Eddie says with a nervous laugh. “I nearly shit my pants.”

“_Hey._ I’m not cleaning up any shit pants,” Bev says. “So please, Eddie, don’t go after any zombies again.”

“That’s definitely on my calendar Bev. Wrestling zombies, tomorrow at 2 pm!” Eddie exclaims, mockingly, writing on his palm with his index finger. Bev and Richie laugh in a chorus of sound, echoing off of the deck with an undertone metallic reverberation.

“Go ahead, Spaghetti. I’ll pencil in ‘saving your ass’ again.” Richie laughs.

Even through what was obviously a joke, Eddie can feel a flush of warmth beneath the line of his collar.

“I have my very own guard dog. What have I done to deserve such an _amazing_ gift?” Eddie rolls his eyes, biting back a smile on the edge of his lips. Richie leans across Bev to look at him. 

“Be adorable, of course,” Richie says, like it’s obvious. Eddie wants to be mad, but his mind betrays him and skids to a halt instead. Richie called him cute often as kids, sure. But for some reason, it has a different weight now.

“Also, you’re like three inches tall, so someone has to protect your little gnome ass.”

His affection bleeds into that familiar pang of rage. He screws his eyebrows together.

“We can’t all be fucking skyscrapers, Rich. How did you even grow to be that tall? I think I saw you eat, like, one vegetable in your entire life.”

“God, do you remember when he ate an entire box of Girl Scout cookies for breakfast?” Bev mentions.

“They’re delicious--” Richie starts.

“Oh. My God. You fucking did!” Eddie says. “You ate an _entire box_ of them at Stan’s house. How are you not dead already?!”

“Look, that was one time. Also, I didn’t feel like cooking,” Richie retorts, a smile spreading across his face. “Double-also, Stan dared me.”

“I’m going to force you to eat canned vegetables now, you know,” Eddie says, partially serious. Richie leans back with a laugh.

“Anything for you, Eds.” 

Something about the tone in his voice makes Eddie’s heart stutter. He wants to give him some sort of witty reply or make it into a joke, but his brain can’t quite catch up. He swings his legs against the open air instead, staring out into the night. He’s shackled by his own silence once again.

* * *

Eddie finally decides to haul himself off of the makeshift bed after a few hours of tossing and turning. Richie, in typical Tozier fashion, had made a spot for himself smack-dab in the middle of the pallet. His legs are too long and too gangly to properly stretch out in the cramped space, so he’d instead elected to sleep leaning up against the wall, leather jacket stuffed behind his back. Despite what Eddie can only imagine was an uncomfortable position for anyone, let alone a man in his forties now (God, they were old), Richie seems to be sleeping soundly.

Of course, Eddie can’t be as lucky. Flashes of grabbing fingers and snarling jaws assault him every time he closes his eyes until finally, he gives up completely. He can still feel the gust of rancid, infection-smelling breath washing over his face even now, hours later. It’s pointless to try to sleep. For hours he focuses on Richie’s breathing, trying to settle himself down.

He must have dozed off at some point, though, because when he takes another scan of the room he realizes there’s an empty spot to Richie’s left.

Equal parts concerned and curious, Eddie hauls himself up carefully and toes himself up the ladder towards the observation deck. On the opposite end, leaning her elbows on the railing, Bev is smoking another cigarette.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Eddie asks, quietly. Bev, startled by Eddie’s voice, jumps a little bit and fumbles her cigarette in between her fingers in an attempt not to drop it over the railing. She softens when she turns to face him, and she puffs out a cloud of smoke with a small laugh.

“Um.. yeah, no,” she says, with an uncomfortable chuckle. “I’m a little amped up, I guess.”

“I guess that makes two of us,” Eddie says, leaning on the railing a few paces away from her. She looks at him for a moment, quietly, her eyes searching his face.

“Are you okay, Eddie? You gave us both a scare back there,” Bev asks, quietly. She takes a quick drag before turning back to face him.

“I mean,” he says, closing his eyes against the evening breeze. “It’s all just a bunch to take in. I don’t really feel like the danger hit me until today.”

It’s true. Honestly, he isn’t sure exactly how he’s feeling -- he’ll have to wait for his mind to calm the fuck down before he can even begin to answer that question -- but everything suddenly began feeling so real.

“Yeah,” Bev says. “You don’t get excitement like that back in Chicago, for sure.”

Something about the far-away look in her eyes makes Eddie pause. He leans against the railing, staring out over the darkness. Bev’s smoke swirls in the darkness, pouring out of her like the tiny clouds that dotted the horizon.

Every time she even mentioned her home in Chicago she treated it like some sort of secret she didn’t mean to admit. There is a thin line of reddish blots hidden beneath the sleeves of her blazer that Eddie could see each time she brought the cigarette up to her lips, and it only made Eddie more suspicious. He chews on his bottom lip idly.

He chooses his words carefully. “Do you miss anything back home?”

Eddie can only imagine that it’s a sensitive topic between Bev and her husband, considering the little he knows about him... but he wants to give her the option to speak if she wants to.

“You’re asking about Tom,” she says, her voice quiet and without a hint of anger or bitterness in it.

“I wasn’t going to say it…” Eddie trails off, glancing sideways at her.

“No, I don’t miss anything back home.” She responds without hesitating and casts her gaze down toward the river below. “I mean, I wish we met back up under different circumstances. But the moment I got here with you guys, I realized how alone I was in my own home.”

Eddie is definitely able to sympathize with that fact. It wasn’t until he got Mike’s call and slowly began to remember Derry that he realized just how _boring_ his life had become. It was the same cycle of work, being stuck in traffic, eating, sleeping. Rinse and repeat, and then before he knew it he was fucking forty.

“I guess it just feels like I’m home, even in this shitty lighthouse,” she finishes, looking back at him. “Is that weird?”

“No,” he says, instantly. “It’s not weird at all.”

Her blue eyes search his face for a moment, and she nods slowly. She takes in a deep breath, like she’s thinking, before she turns the question back on him.

“What about you? Do you miss everything back in New York?” 

Eddie scoffs, kicking the edge of one of the rails gently with his foot.

“When you’re a kid you always have that dream that you’ll get married and have kids and have a white-picket fence and shit, you know?” Eddie says, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop them. “But now we’re surrounded by zombies -- or, or whatever the _fuck_ you want to call them, and I realized I don’t care about any of that shit. I don’t care at all. You guys were the closest thing to a family I ever had.”

He takes a breath before continuing for just a little longer. “Back home it’s the same shit, different day. But even when I’m in life or death situations out here, I feel fucking _loved._ I never felt like that with… with Myra.”

He realizes the moment he goes to pause to suck in another breath that he may have been a little... too real. Bev is watching him quietly, her cigarette ashing between two of her fingers. He twists his wedding ring absentmindedly, hating how it suddenly feels like a vice now that he’d admitted everything to himself.

“Sorry, that was heavy.”

Bev looks at him for a moment longer, but then nods slowly. “No, no. I know exactly what you mean,” she says softly. It’s obvious by the look on her face that she’s trying her hardest to choose her words carefully - to not give too much away. It reminds him of how she spoke about her father all those years ago, and it makes his stomach twist in uncomfortable knots.

The two of them share a fucked up, traumatic history. It’s one that they never touched on verbally, but it’s an odd sort of bond that connected them. Having strained or even volatile relationships with your parents at such a delicate age is never easy, but there was an extra level of shit when it happened in Derry.

It was a secret that only the two of them fully understood. Richie was always a little closer to Bev than he was, so during the times that Bev called him instead of Richie back in their school days, Eddie always knew that something was wrong.

They would spend hours talking in hushed tones, locking themselves away in their rooms from monsters that were very tangibly _human_ and lurking just outside their doors.

It seems like not much has changed.

“You guys were always there for me, even though I didn’t remember it.” She says, quietly, taking a drag of her cigarette. “But when I left Derry I started to forget. I... forgot what real love felt like, I guess. I fell into old habits.”

She didn’t have to say much more. Eddie had noticed the bruises on her wrists, and with the missing wedding ring it doesn’t take a genius to put two-and-two together. He sighs, watching one of the infected stumbling around the parking lot of the lighthouse.

“Yeah. But fuck, we’re here now, right?” Eddie says. “We don’t have to go back to those old habits. We can just… move on and actually live our lives. It’s not like anyone would blame us with these fucks walking around.”

He motions to the zombie down below, and she follows his gaze. “That _is_ a pretty good excuse,” Bev says, that mischievous light twinkling behind her eyes again. Light that compliments a look of newfound freedom.

“You don’t have to stick with Myra, either. You could move on.”

Something about the look in her eyes tells Eddie she knows a little too much about who Eddie might want to choose to “move on” with. He clears his throat and pointedly focuses his vision down to the parking lot again.

Bev chuckles. She _definitely_ knows way too much. She and Stan had both always been much too perceptive for their own good.

Falling into silence once again, the two of them watch the shambling silhouette down below. It moves aimlessly, following its own fucked up path to finding whatever it is that possibly-undead creatures searched for. Eddie feels kind of like a kid watching a colony of ants under a magnifying glass, except these are creatures he isn’t able to crush beneath his shoe.

Even the idea of crushing a zombie makes him shudder involuntarily.

“I hope the rest of the Losers are okay.” Eddie looks over to Bev when she speaks up. Her voice is somehow quieter now.

“I’m sure they are,” Eddie says, suddenly more sure of himself than he thought. “We’ve dealt a lot with killer creatures in the past. They’ll be fine.”

Bev looks over at him again. She snubs out the end of her cigarette before nodding, her eyes crinkling into a smile.

“You’re right. And we’ll be there to support them soon.” She looks like she wants to say more, but instead just shakes her head. Bev crosses the space between them and hugs him gently, rubbing her hand on his back.

“Thanks, Eddie,” she says quietly. “Get some sleep soon, okay? It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.”

She leaves without another word, flashing him a small smile before toeing her way down the hatch toward their shelter.

* * *

He settles into the pallet a little while after Bev had made her way down the hatch. She’s lying down, scrunched in an awkward sort of ball, with her back toward him. He can tell by the way that she’s breathing that she had finally fallen asleep.

Richie is still lightly snoring just like he had been before. Eddie settles in close to him, trying to keep a healthy distance between the two of them even despite his desperate need for warmth. Richie truly looks peaceful while he sleeps; his eyes are closed gently and lips parted slightly to allow for little huffs of breath between dreams. Eddie rests his cheek against the crook of his own elbow, watching.

_“You could move on.”_

Bev’s voice rings in his ears.

His cheeks burn. Sure, he may have had a crush on Richie when he was younger. And sure, he definitely felt that weird butterfly feeling in his stomach when they met up again in BIA. But this is the zombie apocalypse, and he can’t risk losing Richie by saying something impulsive. Not now.

Eddie closes his eyes slowly, focusing on his rhythmic breathing. In… out… in… and out…

Finally, his body gives in to the call of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a more character-focused chapter in-between some of the more "major" ones! I'm about to leave to Cali for a vacation until the end of the year, so this will most likely be my last update for a little while. But I'm itching to continue the story so hoooopefully it won't be too long!
> 
> I wanted to focus a bit more on characterization and the friendship between Bev and Eddie, since I love the idea of them kind of bonding over their childhood traumas. Hopefully that got across alright!
> 
> Thanks as always to[AltoCaramel](https://twitter.com/altocara) for betaing for me! I couldn't do it without you. 💖


	4. The Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting across the bridge proves to be a little more difficult than they thought when they reach a few bumps in the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I'm back from vacation, I can officially begin working on this bad boy again! 
> 
> A big thank-you to my beta reader [Jen!](https://twitter.com/altocara) as always for being the best beta-er a girl could ask for! 
> 
> And also to [Al](https://twitter.com/pngdraws) for both helping me brainstorm some ideas and continuing to support my writing of her AU!! You both are a blessing <3

Golden rays of morning filter in from the lighthouse windows, stirring Eddie from his sleep. Red blots dance behind his eyelids, and he turns his body away from the light in a feeble attempt to escape from their glowing assault.

At some point in the middle of the night, his insomnia decided to come back with a fucking vengeance. It was hard to say when he finally fell off into sleep, but it couldn’t have been long. An hour or two, at the most. He lets out a low grumble, pointedly refusing to open his eyes, and stretches.

During his exaggerated stretch, his hand brushes against something soft and warm. He scoots his body forward, searching for that feeling again, until his body sinks against the source of the warmth. He hums in contentment, breathing in a sigh when his cheek presses in comfortably against soft fabric.

_Five more minutes._ Sleep dances at the edge of his consciousness, threatening to pull him back into dreamless darkness. _That’s all I need._

The warmth envelopes him like a blanket, and he lets out a soft sound as he melts into it.

There’s a brief moment of quiet while he tries to settle in. He breathes in deeply, relishing in a familiar scent that he can’t quite identify. The scent pulls at the veil of his drowsiness and he moves his head in closer, breathing in again.

It’s a mix of pine trees, candy, and… cigarettes.

It smells like _Richie._

Eddie freezes in place. He swallows once, twice, three times. He hopes its a subtle movement when he finally cracks open one of his eyes. Now, _very much_ awake, he tries to take in his surroundings. It has to be late-morning by now. Light is filtering in from the windows surrounding them, basking the tiny room in an intense, golden glow. He follows his gaze down to his side and sets his jaw.

In his sleep-laced stupor, he’d cuddled directly into Richie.

His cheek is still resting comfortably against the stubbled nook between Richie’s throat and his shoulder when he wills himself to glance upward.

Richie is staring down at him with a look of fondness on his face that Eddie had never seen even in their youth. By the looks of it, he hasn’t been awake for long, either. His blue eyes are soft and lidded with sleep, glasses sunk low onto the bridge of his nose. The bags beneath his eyes are puffy after a long night of sleep, and his eyelids are drifting like he’s fighting himself to stay awake.

There was a time - when he was younger - that being close to Richie like this would be commonplace, but was no less special. There were plenty of times that he woke up next to Richie in a tangle of limbs, feeling safer than he ever had whenever he was alone. He looked very similar to how he did all those years ago, with a little bit of age peppered against his sharp features.

He was still just as fucking striking as he was back then.

In the bright light of the morning - in that brief moment that feels like an eternity, Eddie can see the soft dust of faded freckles on the bridge of his nose. His hair is a mess like it always has been, but something about it is different. It hangs low on his forehead, threatening to spill over his eyes, and catches the light in such a way that makes it look particularly… pretty. Eddie finds his stomach fluttering at the thought.

Maybe his feelings aren’t gone, after all.

The moment that Richie realizes he’s awake, though, that soft expression changes. A crooked smirk replaces his smile - the earlier fondness gone as quickly as it came.

“Morning, Spaghetti,” he says, voice heavy with sleep. “You gonna keep drooling on me? ‘Cause I know I need a shower, but I’d rather take one with water.” 

“As if you’d take a shower,” Eddie snarks, without missing a beat. He counts his lucky stars that his voice doesn’t come out as shaky as he feels. 

“I take showers. Sometimes,” Richie says. ”But you obviously don’t. Your breath is terrible, nerd.” He pushes Eddie off of his shoulder unceremoniously, but he can almost swear that he sees a flush rise to Richie’s cheeks. 

"What? Showers and teeth have no correlation, dickwad! And everyone's breath stinks in the morning anyway," Eddie shoots back with a huff. He smooths down the front of his shirt. He's suddenly glad it comes out with its normal bite. "At least I try to brush my teeth still. When was the last time you did?"

"We're surviving in the apocalypse," Richie says, as if it's _obvious._ "Why would I bother?"

“We’ve been in the apocalypse for two days, dude. That doesn’t give you an excuse not to brush your teeth,” Eddie says. “Your dad was literally a dentist, Rich.”

"Are you telling me you’re trying to be my _dad?_” Richie says, his eyes twinkling. Eddie knows that look. Regret washes over him instantly. Richie’s always been a witty bastard, in all of the worst ways. “If you wanted to be my daddy, Eds--”

“Rich, what the fuck, you know that’s not what I meant--”

“_You_ said it!”

“You’re just trying to avoid the fact that you don’t brush your _teeth,_” Eddie emphasizes the last word with a hand gesture, and Richie fucking cackles in response.

Eddie opens his mouth to retort when a long, drawn-out groan cuts him off.

“How are you two so _loud_, all the time?” The quiet voice of Bev grumbles from the other side of the make-shift bed. The two of them fall quiet for long enough to hear her shuffle quietly, shrugging off part of her jacket that she had been using as a blanket.

“It’s a God-given talent, Bev,” Richie says, throwing a pair of finger guns at her back. But he still scoots over, giving her a little bit of room. “Plus, Eddie was cuddling with me and _now_ \- could’ya believe it - he’s harassing me--”

Richie falls into his familiar foghorn leghorn Voice, and Eddie feels a new rush of fondness crash over him.

Eddie interjects. “I was _not_ cuddling with you, you’re just warm--” Stopping himself short, he feels his heart leap up into his throat. He hopes that Richie can’t sense him having a fucking crisis beside him.

“You were totally cuddling with me, dude.”

“You guys can cuddle all you want, but just be quiet about it,” Bev grumbles, rubbing both of her eyes with the butt of her palms. She seems to wake up a little bit when she’s done, and she blinks over at Eddie. “What time is it?”

He got so wrapped up in everything Richie that he had forgotten to check the time. He pulls up his hoodie sleeve and checks his watch.

“Just before nine,” Eddie says, looking back up at her. It’s beginning to get late now, and they need to start moving if they’re going to get across the bridge before the sky dims outside. From the look on her face, Bev is thinking the same thing.

Bev lets out a quiet groan. “How long will it take us to get to the bridge again?”

“An hour, give or take. Then it shouldn’t take us too long to cross it…” Eddie says. He tries not to think of all the risks they’re taking with crossing the bridge. There’s a good chance that they can get trapped if they’re surrounded - and if they need to escape, the water is a long way down. Not to mention if they, you know, _hypothetically_ got pinned by a car that wasn’t properly put into park...

Eddie chews on his bottom lip.

“We might as well eat something and pack our stuff up,” Bev says, quietly. “We really won’t want to wait around all the way until it’s dark.”

* * *

Eddie’s nearly finished packing up all of his stuff when an excited chattering pulls him from his stray thoughts. He looks over his shoulder, pausing mid-packing, to see Richie proudly presenting him an aluminum can. Eddie squints at it, then flickers his gaze back up to Richie with a furrowed brow.

“Folgers? Dude, we don’t have any hot water.”

“Why would we need water? Eating it is basically the same,” Richie says. “We have to start our day out right, Eds.”

“What are you talking about, you dumbass?” Eddie says, furrowing his brow even more. “You, and I, and _Bev,_” he starts, motioning towards Bev, who has since stopped her own packing to look at them.

“Hey, don’t bring me into this--” she breaks in, amusement clear in her voice.

“--All know that it isn’t the fucking same. We’re 40 years old, Rich, you know damn well by now that it tastes nothing like when it’s brewed,” Eddie says, crossing his arms. “You can’t just fucking eat it. It’s -- it looks like you’re just eating fucking dirt.”

But he realizes in an instant that it was the wrong thing to say, because Richie looks like he’s taking it as a fucking _challenge_. He pops open the can with his free hand and cradles it beneath the other arm like a little football.

“Dude. Don’t fucking eat it.”

“It’s exactly the same,” Richie says, shuffling through his bag until he finds what he was looking for. He lets out a small ‘a-ha!’ when he pulls a plastic spoon out from the depths of his bag and turns back to Eddie with a grin.

“Who has time for all of the brewing shit anyways? You just gotta knock it back, y’know?” He continues, emphasizing his words by scooping out a heaping spoonful of the coffee granules and lifting it to wave just above the half-full can, little bits falling back into it from the momentum like dust.

“Don’t you fucking eat it, I swear I’ll--”

“You’ll what?” A shit-eating grin spreads across Richie’s face, and there’s a telltale twinkle in his eyes that confirms to Eddie that there’s no way he’s going to be able to convince Richie otherwise. Trying to save himself from a terrible joke, Eddie opens his mouth and then closes it.

“You know what? Do it, Rich. Prove me wrong,” he declares, leaning against the table behind him. “I dare you.”

Bev, from her spot across the room, perks up a little bit, seeming to be interested in the whole fiasco. There’s a mischievous glint in her eyes - the type that screams _“I wanna see where this is going”_ \- which only seems to egg Richie on.

Eddie steels himself when Richie looks him directly in the eyes and thrusts the spoon into his mouth. Silence spreads between the three of them for a moment, until Richie’s face twists when he attempts to chew. There’s a sick sort of satisfaction as Eddie watches him struggle to keep his composure. It feels like victory.

He nearly keeps up his straight face until Richie looks like he’s going through all seven stages of grief simultaneously, and finally, Eddie crumples into a fit of laughter.

“Why--” Richie chokes out. “Why doesn’t it taste like fucking coffee?”

Bev stumbles toward Eddie, laughing so hard that her chest is heaving and there are tears collecting in the creases beneath her eyes. She grabs onto Eddie’s shoulder, pulling at his sleeve in her struggle to keep herself upright. They stand next to each other, and Eddie finds himself laughing until he feels a pounding pain in the front of his head.

“You haven’t-- you haven’t even tried it before?” Bev’s laughter heightens the pitch in her voice. Between wheezes, she turns to Eddie and pleads. “Eddie, you have to get him some water or something!” Eddie barks out a laugh.

“He did this to himself. He’s gotta deal with the consequences.”

“Spaghett-” Richie coughs again. “Spaghetti-- that’s cruel.”

After Richie nearly collapses trying to scrape the granules off his tongue, Eddie finally digs through his bag and throws a water bottle at him. Richie may be a dumbass, but Eddie doesn’t want his headstone to specifically read _‘Richie - the dumbass who choked on coffee grinds.’_

Richie just narrowly catches it and chugs it like his life depends on it.

Bev breaks into another fit of laughter.

After chugging the entire bottle, Richie finally calms down a little bit. He puts his hands on his knees, bracing himself while he fucking wheezes. Bev had finished her packing, just barely, and there’s another bubble of laughter when she slings it on her shoulder. 

“Now that you’re done being a jackass, can we leave?” Eddie says, trying to hold back the way his lip twitches when he sees Richie try to brush his tongue off for the tenth time. 

“Yeah. Let’s get out of here before Folger boy decides he’s going to eat more,” Bev smirks.

* * *

The sun is high in the sky when they finally resume their path back towards the river. 

Something about the walk back to the bridge is… odd. There are a few small details Eddie hadn’t noticed on the way toward the lighthouse; like how loud the water is as it splashes against the riverbank, or how small woodland creatures still found the courage to wiggle through the tall grass, even in the fucking Apocalypse. 

But then there are bigger things: Like tents that line the side of the road - tents that are torn to ribbons and decorated with splashes of crimson. Or personal belongings haphazardly dropped on the side of the road, in what Eddie can only hope was haste. There’s even the occasional car parked on the roads higher up on the riverbank, with doors open and hazard lights blinking ominously in broad daylight.

Those bigger things end up being harder to ignore.

It’s strange, seeing so many signs of life and not actually encountering another living human. He came here from New York City, for God’s sake; a place where it was impossible to be alone even when you wanted to. His home state of Maine quite is different than New York City, of course, but there isn’t a soul to be found that’s not glassy-eyed and dying.

Even Richie looks uncomfortable when they pass yet another makeshift campsite, finding it completely empty and ransacked. By the looks of their tent, the occupants didn’t leave their shelter willingly.

The idea of being plucked from a sleeping bag whirls through Eddie’s head like a storm. He swallows down a lump in his throat, trying his best to think of something - anything - but that. But all he can cling onto are the long-forgotten stories his mom used to tell him of _little boys, just like him, who were taken away from their Mommies and never seen again._

Richie seems to catch onto his increasing anxiety and does what he does best: being the loudest human on earth.

He and Bev are half-way through an impromptu whisper-duet of _Don’t Stop Believin'_ when they finally reach the foot of the bridge. 

In the light of the afternoon, the bridge looks even taller than it had the evening before. 

It’s truly a marvel of bricks and steel, spanning far over the horizon to the island on the opposite side. True to its name, the long bridge is incredibly fucking narrow. There are two lanes on either side of the bridge, separated by a thick concrete barrier that acts as an anchor to the bridge’s long steel cables. The lines that connect the bridge together are as wide as the length of his forearm, stretching high into what looks like some sort of brick observation tower. 

Eddie follows the line of cords with his gaze, up over the horizon, and all he can see is the shimmering of metal. The black color of the asphalt is completely hidden by a jumbled mess of cars, tangled together in a spiderweb of destruction. There’s the occasional blinking hazard lights, or plumes of steam unfurling from ruined radiators, accentuating the disaster of the situation to the point where it’s difficult to decide what to focus on.

Eddie imagines the families that once used these cars; singing to the radio or playing games during road trips or even just enjoying the silence on a drive alone. But now those same cars are jammed together in thin lines, empty and hollow like the memories that were left behind. 

Those same well-loved cars act only as simple obstacles for the three of them. Eddie sucks in a breath.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie breathes. “This is gonna be a pain in the ass.”

“You’re just looking at it from the wrong side, Spaghetti,” Richie says with a wave of his hand. “It’s going to be a challenge. An _experiance._” He accentuates the last word with a scarily accurate French accent.

“You literally pull your muscles while stretching, Rich,” Eddie says. “How are you going to survive this?”

“With my charming good looks, of course,” Richie says, jogging ahead. He turns around to look at him then, leaning his hand on one of the cars with a smirk spread across his face. Richie pulls the shirt of his sleeve up, exposing his bicep.

“No zombie can resist these--”

With a heavy, metallic screech, one of the doors to the left of him gives way. A body falls out from the car, twisting and snapping the moment it hits asphalt, and Richie lets out a surprised squeak. He scrambles for his bat, but misses and grabs onto air instead. Eddie can see the panic flash across his features, but he’s too slow to make another attempt.

“Fuck, Richie--” Eddie calls out, and his heart seizes as he watches.

The fucking _thing_ has him, spinning him around with a hand on either shoulder. Richie. It’s fingers grip onto him heavily, yanking at his shirt, and Eddie can hear the groan that escapes its throat as it lunges toward him.

Eddie’s never been good under pressure. No matter what the rest of the Losers might have said when they were kids, Eddie Kaspbrak is the kind of man that would be caught up in the Bystander Effect. If the person on the receiving end was someone else, anyone else, he might have run away.

But this is Richie.

“Rich!” he yells, voice nearly caught in his throat.

Richie whirls himself and the zombie around, using his broad shoulders to knock hard against the creature’s sternum. It lets out a sound close to a gasp of pain as it stumbles backward, briefly stunned enough to where Richie can get a more sure footing. He backs up a few steps, planting his heels into the asphalt, and then the creature is back on him. Its teeth gnash, snapping near the nook of his throat.

“Oh shit, _fuck_\-- Eds?” Richie cries out, his voice shrill. “Bev?”

For a second, Eddie freezes like a deer in the headlights. The fear washes over him like an icy bath, rooting his lead-heavy legs in place. He opens his mouth and reaches out, but he can’t move.

A loud, explosive _bang_ knocks him off-kilter. There’s a sudden bubble of noise: a loud cry of shock from Richie, a squeak of surprise from Bev, and a sickening gurgle from their attacker. But all of these sounds are drowned out by a high-pitched ringing that makes his eyes water. He can feel the way the sound bounces around in his head, and he squeezes one of his eyes shut beneath the pressure.  
He turns on his heel, covering one of his hands with the butt of his palm. He wildly searches for the source, his eyes darting back and forth until his eyes fall on Bev.

Bev, who’s holding a fucking _gun._

The infected that had been clinging to Richie just a moment ago falls backward, suddenly deathly silent. It crumples at Richie’s feet, blood pooling on the asphalt where bits of its head landed with a sickening squish.

Bev _shot_ it.

“Bev, when the fuck did you get that?” Eddie’s voice sounds foreign to his own ears, his voice garbled beneath the shrill squeal still blaring through his skull.

Her arms lower slowly, quaking wildly as she points the barrel of the pistol down toward the asphalt. Her eyes linger for a second too long on the zombie’s still form, and when she finally turns her attention to him, she almost looks sheepish.

“In the apartments outside of Bangor,” she says, tucking it back into the waistband of her jeans. “I had it in my backpack, but when I realized that we’d have to cross the bridge, I figured…”

Eddie gapes at her. She runs a hand through her flame-red hair and shrugs. “I guess it was a good idea to pick it up after all, huh?”

It was a weird idea, to be living in a world where any of them had to be using _guns_. Sure, all of the Losers lived in a time where kids played with them -- B.B. guns and real guns alike -- but Eddie had never actually seen one in person. When he was a kid his mother would rather have a stroke than have her little Eddie-bear play with a gun, toy or not, and when he was an adult he simply never needed to. There was no reason for him to own a gun, not in New York City where guns were things for police officers and not risk analysts that lived in townhomes. 

But I guess that was just their new normal. A normal where traveling between run-down cars and having to kill other humans was an every day, mundane kind of thing. 

“You saved my fucking life.” Richie’s wrecked voice shakes him from his thoughts. There’s a heavy sheen of sweat on his forehead, dripping down to collect into the crook of his nose. It looks like he’s mere seconds from throwing up when he turns to brace himself on the bridge’s concrete barrier. “Holy shit, Bev. Thanks.”

At the sound of his voice, Eddie finally finds the strength to move. He stumbles over to Richie, reaching out his hands to rub down his clothes and search for any injury. Richie looks up at him beneath his lashes, his chest heaving wildly.

“Rich... Rich.”

He smooths his hands over Richie’s arms, his shoulders, his chest. He searches beneath the hem of his sleeve, checking for a scratch or a bite or anything. But when he glances down at his fingers and they come back completely clean, he can’t stop himself from choking out a laugh.

“You’re okay,” he says, voice relieved. It’s more like a statement than a question.

“Physically? I’m peachy, Eds,” Richie says, patting his shoulder gently, like he’s fucking comforting _him._ “I told you it was going to be an experience.” 

“Well, was it an enjoyable one?” Bev says, now on his other side. She has that small, almost mischievous grin that Eddie remembers from childhood; a smile that he can’t help but return.

“I don’t kiss and tell, Bev,” Richie says, with a wink. “I prefer my dates use breath mints, though.”

Despite the adrenaline, Eddie can’t help but laugh. Richie still looks like he’s on the verge of puking, but some of the color begins returning to his face now.

“All the mints in the world couldn’t fix that breath, Rich,” Eddie says. Richie laughs honestly then, and with his joy the color really comes back to him.

The laughter comes a little easier after that, and the three of them continue with jokes until Richie seems like he’s good enough to keep going. Even though Richie tried to convince him that he was completely fine and not shaken at all, Eddie finds himself keeping a closer eye on him while they push forward.

Richie’s always been the type to wave off his own feelings or punctuate them with a joke, always trying to keep attention off of himself. But Eddie can see his discomfort in the little things; like how he gripped his bat just a little too hard, or how his leg bounces when they stop between cars, or the way he looks back every so often to make sure that the other two are still close by. 

He jogs up to his side, bumping him with his shoulder. “You okay, Rich?” 

Richie looks down at him, grin already spreading across his face. “Never better, Spagheds.” 

Eddie sticks his tongue out at him, bumping him a second time for good measure.

Bev ends up pulling a little bit ahead, careful to keep herself only a few paces away from them at all times. She has a determined look on her face, like she’s ready for anything. And in a way, Eddie guesses she is - she and her sharp mind and quick decision making.

The gun probably helps, too.

But then they run into the one obstacle they didn’t quite prepare for. And this one, a gun can’t exactly solve.

“Fuck.”

There’s a truck blocking the entirety of the lane ahead. It’s jammed into the walls, the front crumpled from an impact with the concrete barrier, and it’s curved perfectly to block any path around it. A barrier of metal cables create a jail-cell wall to its left, blocking any hope of an easy cross to the other side of the bridge.

“We’re gonna have to go over it,” Bev says. “Rich, do you think you could help us up?”

“Of course, your highness,” Richie says, in one of his British Voices. He does an exaggerated curtsy at the both of them - taking an extra one when Eddie stares at him - and then strolls up to the truck like he does this every day.

He climbs up onto the truck way smoother than he should. He bounces a little when he pushes off the side-step, and Eddie has to force himself not to stare at how his arms flex when he pulls himself up.

“C’mon, you two; the water’s fine!”

Eddie looks up at him and scowls preemptively. There’s no way that Richie isn’t cooking up a short joke in there somewhere. Pair that with the prospect of having Richie literally clinging onto him to help pull him up, and Eddie’s almost certain that he’s going to have a heart attack.

He reaches for Richie’s outstretched hand reluctantly, and pointedly ignores the way his heart jumps when the latter’s giant fingers curl around his wrist. Richie heaves back with all of his weight, pulling Eddie up at the same moment that he pushes off the ground with his legs. Eddie scrambles to put the toe of his shoe into one of the dents near the truck’s quarter-panel, until finally, he finds a place to gain the last bit of leverage he needs to get on the roof of the truck.

He gasps the moment he scrambles to his feet. “Holy shit, this truck is lifted high.” He can see all the way across the bridge from their vantage point now, and thankfully he only feels a little sick to his stomach at how high they are off the ground.

“No, Spaghetti, you’re just an ant of a man,” Richie says, smiling at him sweetly.

Eddie gives Richie a firm pinch before he leans down to help Bev up onto the truck with them. Richie grabs his arm with a high-pitched, exaggerated whine, but helps him pull Bev up anyway. She’s a little bit more limber than the two of them are, and makes climbing look easy. Pushing up in between them, she’s cradled by two sets of arms and mutters a ‘thank you’ while she gains her bearings.

And, of course, she pinches them both as soon as she’s able.

“Get along, you two. Or I’m gonna turn this car around.” Richie barks out a laugh, and she smirks up at him. 

It feels natural when the three of them are together. It’s almost _normal,_ like it’s right where Eddie is supposed to be. Even if that means that their new normal is standing on top of a lifted truck, looking over a bridge that’s eternally stuck in a ghost town version of rush-hour gridlock. They gently bat and push at each other, making little jokes or threaten to push each other off the truck, but it’s all done in love.

They calm down, eventually, and finally turn back to the task at hand. Eddie looks over the horizon, scanning the rest of the bridge for any unexpected obstacles. But there’s nothing but clusters of cars, sewn together like a shitty patch-work quilt. There’s no movement, no fires, no crashes. It looks… safe.

“Looks like the coast is clear,” Eddie says, looking down at the cars below. They’re probably half-way across the bridge now, and if his map is right then they should be on the neighboring island long before sunset. Bev walks beside him, cupping her hand over her eyes.

After a moment, she seems to come to the same conclusion. She nods.

“Yeah, if we follow the path around that yellow car, we should have a clear path ahead,” she says, pointing with her finger across a small gap a few feet ahead of them. “We should try to search through some of the cars on our way out, too. We might not have another chance.”

Eddie hums in agreement. Richie looks like he’s never been more excited for anything in his life, and it almost looks like his head might bobble off his neck with how quickly he nods.

“Just keep your wits about you. I don’t want to have to save your asses again.”

“Hey, it was Richie who tried to make out with the zombie, not me,” Eddie says, carefully lowering himself down onto the asphalt below. Bev bounces down to his left, and Richie slides off the side with ease.

Fucking show-offs.

“Yeah, sorry Eds. I just missed Mrs. K so much--” Richie leans on him dramatically.

“She’s dead, asshole!” Eddie snaps, playfully slapping his arm.

Richie only grins back at him, winking, and turns away from him with a salute. They spread out, now especially careful to check around each car before they approach it, and get to work. Richie doesn’t even pretend to make fun of him when he begins to search around and beneath each of the cars, treating each vehicle with a heavy dose of caution.

Bev starts with a tiny, silver car that wrecked out on one side of the bridge, and Eddie takes the one directly to the left of hers. Richie stands guard behind them, just in case, keeping his bat slung over his shoulder. Just the simple act of him keeping watch made Eddie feel safer than he’d ever say out loud.

Richie finds another car ahead that has a zombie that looks like it’s only half alive, with glazed eyes and slow movements, and Eddie almost feels bad when the three of them have to dispatch it. He feels an odd sense of sickness - deep in his stomach - when he realizes that watching them fall doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it had before. Bev looks down at the body like she feels pity for it, or maybe for the person it used to be and gently hauls it out of the car before checking through it.

Eddie finds another bright blue car that is very much occupied not too long after, and tries his hardest not to make eye contact with the creature inside. The sound of fingers squealing down the streaked glass windows makes a chill run down his spine. And if he walks a little faster than normal past that vehicle in particular, well... that’s his business.

At first, they don’t find much of anything. Some hand sanitizing wipes, tissues, umbrellas, and other little things that while helpful, they aren’t exactly what they needed to be looking for in this particular situation. Eddie packs a few into his bag just in case, though, because it’s always better to be prepared.

But then, they start finding a few more useful things. It begins with Bev finding a few flashlights, and then some extra batteries, and then a few protein bars. They’re the disgusting kind; the that tasted more like chalk than food, but at least it’s _something._ Then they find a car with a box of matches, a half-empty box of ammunition, and Eddie’s favorite: a first aid kit.

He can’t even deny Bev’s observation that he looks like a kid on Christmas when he opens up one of the trunks to find the completely-sealed, red box staring up at him. But a first aid kit is one of the things that he’d really been hoping to find. Statistically, they are much more likely to survive if they have a steady amount of medical supplies, and this is definitely a good start. Richie’s at his side in an instant when he lets out an excited laugh, but seems to deflate when his eyes land on Eddie’s find.

“Eddie, you’re a grown man excited about a first aid kit,” he tuts. “What has your life come to?”

“Look, dumbass, you’re gonna thank me when you’ve got a little boo-boo because you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself,” Eddie mutters, shoving him off his shoulder. He tucks the plastic box into his backpack, pushing it all the way down to the bottom to keep it extra-secure.

“Did you really just say boo-boo?”

“Yeah. Because you’re a child and I have to speak to you like one,” Eddie replies, shrugging his pack back up onto his shoulder with a grin. The shocked face that Richie makes in response is almost enough to make him laugh out loud.

“Damn, Eds, you really went for the throat,” Richie says, his voice beautifully high and musical. The sound of it melts his resolve, and Eddie laughs along with him. That laugh is by far his favorite -- a true and honest laugh, when Richie is caught off guard.

He wants to hear it forever.

Suddenly he turns his back on Richie right then, trying not to make his fondness more obvious than it probably was already.

The three of them drift between cars after that, with a little more purpose. With an actual goal in mind, crossing the bridge is a much more palatable challenge. They’re almost completely across the bridge now, with more than plenty of time to spare before the sunset greets them once again. Standing over the water also allows for a nice breeze in the summer heat, and he tries to take in the moment for as long as he can.

His moment of peace is shattered by a shriek of laughter.

Richie’s standing next to one of the cars he had been searching, digging through the back seat like an archeologist searching for fossils. Eddie walks closer toward him, interest piqued when he bounces up to his full height.

“Look what I found,” Richie says, like he’s found some sort of buried treasure in-between his cupped hands. Eddie cocks an eyebrow when he begins to make something that sounds like a drumroll sound in the back of his throat. It must be something good if he’s making a big deal about it, and Eddie turns his full attention to him.

Richie moves one of his hands away dramatically, revealing a tiny dashboard hula dancer ornament. She bobbles against the wind from her perch on his palm and he imitates the movement by swirling his hips and wiggling his shoulders. He keeps eye contact with him all the while, blue eyes big behind his glasses.

“What the _fuck_ is that, man?” Eddie laughs, and Richie’s dance only grows more exaggerated with his increasing laughter. The hula girl sways along with him, increasing in speed, and Eddie laughs harder.

“Hey, Richie?” Bev’s voice calls from somewhere behind them. “What’s small, angry, and has a gun?”

“Eddie?” Richie calls back, and Eddie furrows his eyebrows.

Eddie turns around to look at her, and he catches sight of her a few paces away, head dipped into the front seat of a car. But then she pulls her head out, straightening up with her back to them, and Eddie can almost swear he hears her laugh.

“No, Eddie’s _twin._”

When she turns around, she reveals quite possibly the most ridiculous garden gnome he’s ever seen. It’s hunched over, with a rifle tucked under one arm, aiming ahead. It has a smug look on its tiny, porcelain face, complete with one squinted eye to look down the sights. And true to Bev’s words, it looks just like him.

It looks like a gag gift that Richie would buy at a garage sale, and Eddie decidedly hates it.

“Oh my God, they even made it to _scale!_” Richie exclaims, and Bev loses it. She leans against the car she was searching, her chest heaving beneath the weight of her giggles.

Richie howls with laughter beside him, too, and his tiny hula girl dances along. It’s like her tiny, eternal smile is taunting him. As if she isn’t simply an itsy-bitsy, 10-inch tall ornament.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” Eddie says, rounding on Richie, who skirts away from him with more grace than an adult man should. “I’m 5’9, Rich, that’s the national average - you’re just huge.”

“Did you actually check what the national average was?” Richie looks at him with twinkling eyes, and Eddie feels his cheeks flush. He didn’t look at the statistics, no, he was just… curious. He’s allowed to google things in his spare time.

“No, I just--”

“You totally did!”

When Richie’s laugh becomes high-pitched and squeaky, Eddie can’t hold his composure. He runs for him then, not showing him mercy even when he runs toward Bev for some semblance of safety, calling out increasingly threatening versions of his name. Then Bev’s in on it, running at full speed beside Richie, cradling their new-found treasures and laughing all the same.

They slow after a little while, when Richie gets too winded to keep running from him, and Eddie relishes in the way that Richie howls when he tugs at his shirt. Eddie scowls at Bev when she tucks the little gnome in one of the pockets of her pack, and gives her a shove for good measure. She sticks her tongue out at him, her cheeks flushed.

Soon enough, when Eddie is satisfied that Richie has learned his lesson, he gets back to work. He searches through as many cars as he can pry open, inching his way through the remainder of the bridge.  
He moves on from car to car, listening quietly to Bev and Richie talking about an old iPod they found and their newer music tastes. He looks up, watching them pack their new finds into their respective bags, and can’t help but smile at the thought. 

His mind flashes back to the past, on a night where they blasted music in one of the Hanlon family barns. The seven of them danced and sang together, all those years ago... And for a single night, they didn’t have a care in the world.

If only they could go back to that.


End file.
